Now that it’s summer again and hordes of trolls (the live below the bridge kind, not the hate-spewing online kind) are headed to the U.P. on vacation, I thought I would perform a public service by helping them avoid a major food faux pas.
Namely whether to put ketchup or gravy on your pasty. (If you don’t know what a pasty is then why are you reading this far?)
As a Yooper and a ketchup fan, I can assure you that if you want to fit in with the locals and not look more like a tourist than you already do, then use ketchup. (Not catsup. Ketchup. There’s a difference. I don’t know what it is, but there is one.)
But if you want to look like the kind of downstate-living, slack-jaw vacation goober who wears socks with sandals and makes fun of the way Yoopers talk, then, by all means, use gravy.
Just know that if you do, all the Yoopers at the pasty stand are going to be edging their kin away from you, whispering “Stay away from the trolls, kids. What they got might be catchin’.”
Oh, it’s definitely catching. Downstate Michigan is practically lousy with people who don’t know how to properly dress a pasty.
A few months ago, for instance, I took a poll on my website about it, and despite broad and obvious hints from yours truly that respondents should choose ketchup, the majority still did not. The results were thus: Thirty eight percent favored gravy, 34 percent favored ketchup, 27 percent inexplicably went with “eat them plain,” and 1 percent went with, ick, sour cream.
This result puzzled me at first until I realized that most of the people who took the poll live downstate, where they think Michigan lefts are the height of traffic efficiency, the Detroit Lions are a professional football team, the Ambassador Bridge is impressive (that’s not impressive – the Mackinac Bridge is impressive) and regular toast is superior to Trenary Toast, which I assure you is not the case.
So of course these cretins picked gravy over ketchup, which, by the way, is the pasty condiment of choice for God, Yoopers, and anyone with functioning taste buds.
The only thing I can say for gravy is it’s a better second choice for a topping if the ketchup runs out than the alternatives, such as going plain or using butter, barbecue sauce, hot sauce or sour cream.
I’m personally baffled why anyone would eat a pasty plain but one reader insisted he does so because “the miners ate them without gravy and without silverware, that’s why they are shaped that way. Just pick ’em up and enjoy!”
That’s a fair point, but miners also died of black lung and falling rocks, too. You gonna copy that, too?
As for the person who said sour cream – which is a far greater pasty-related crime than being a gravy-slurper – I’m sorry but we can never be friends.
Please take your tourist dollars elsewhere this year.
Image credit: All Things Michigan
Chow Chow is the traditional Cornish mustard relish preferred by English descendants like us Roberts’
First off, the correct answer is ketchup.
Second, even if gravy were an option, (which it shouldn’t be,) that weird – made from a packet – substance they pass off as gravy shouldn’t even be classified as a food, and shouldn’t be put on anything.
Real gravy is made with the drippings from pot roast. It belongs with the pot roast.
Since pasties are usually made with ground beef, the correct condiment is ketchup. I thought you might like the scientific explanation.
And as for sour cream, “say, what???”
Yeah, and you probably put that vile red stuff on your Coney’s, too!
I learned from Mum pasties are served with gravy. I learned from my Dad never to put that vile red stuff on a coney.
Yes Andy, being a fellow Yooper and all a pasty and ketchup is like a beer on a hot summer day, butter on popcorn and you did have to mention Trenary toast I grew up on that stuff. Everybody’s mother could make a great pasty around our block and you ate them steaming hot with ketchup. Now excuse me, I need to order some Trenary toast.
There is a made in Michigan store in Frankenmuth they carry Ternary toast. I am a YOOPER living with the Trolls. I have lived in many places down below.
In the past year I have moved from the Southeast part of the state to the Northeast part of the state.. The first time years ago Someone asked if I wanted gravy on my pasty thought they were kidding. I called my best friend in Escanaba and had to tell her.. I asked her what kind of person puts gravy on a pasty.
Ketchup. Always. Forever.
God help us, though, there are people who have been known to use salsa, and (brace yourself) MAYONNAISE on their pasties. They should be beaten with pointy sticks.
My parents, Danish mother, German dad brought us up with homemade pasties and mushroom soup as a gravy…still prefer it that way but all you can get up north is beef gravy…not as good as I liked but still better than ketchup…try it with a mushroom soup gravy and you’ll never go back for theirs…
Not being a Yooper; what is tenary toast anyway?
https://trenaryhomebakery.com/
Andrew, I love your posts when you leave out the bullet points, as you did today. Wonderful post!
Now, perhaps you might write other articles about other regional food? Lake Perch! You could do a parallel article about whether to use lemon (Yes!) or Tartar Sauce (No!) And, in your research, please contact me about the epidemic of fake Lake Perch in Mackinaw City, and the authentic Lake Perch down here in certain saloons in Grand Rapids.
Well said, Andy!! Ketchup is the only way to go. When I was at MTU from ’77-’81, we could always tell the non-Yoopers by the ones who loaded gravy on their pasty. Of course they were shunned for the rest of their time there 🙂 ….
We eat ours with mushroom gravy. Call me a troll but remember … you ain’t the boss of me! (my mom made excellent pasties and my dad ate them wrong … with… gasp … Brooks Catsup.)
I don’t even put ketchup on French fries, let alone a pasty. To each their own. I have been to many countries and eaten countless examples of local cuisine.
Nobody should try to act like a local in ordering or eating food. You are paying for it. Enjoy it as you like. Be an alpha.
I think you have become a Troll without even realizing it. Gravy is much better and more widely used, either beef or mushroom versions.
The Pasty Guy eats them with zero condiments. Keeps them all on the same level.