So, what exactly is a handpie?
The short answer: a hearty meal wrapped in flaky pastry, made to be held in your hand and eaten without a knife and fork.
The longer answer involves Cornish miners, grandmothers, a cookbook inspired by Outlander, some truly excellent Prince Edward Island ingredients, my mother's legendary lemon meringue pie and the realization that humans all over the world have independently come to one very important conclusion:
Delicious things are even better when you wrap them in dough.
We certainly didn't invent that idea.
But we've spent more than a decade perfecting our version of it.
First, Let's Talk About Pasties
Long before there were Handpies on Prince Edward Island, there were pasties in Cornwall.
The Cornish pasty has a history stretching back centuries, but by the 18th and 19th centuries it had become deeply connected with Cornwall's mining communities. A hearty filling of beef, potato, swede (what we'd call turnip), onion and seasoning was enclosed in pastry to create a substantial, portable meal.
In other words: dinner you could hold in your hand.
Sound familiar?
There's a reason our own PEI Pasty feels particularly at home in this family. Ours is filled with Atlantic beef, PEI potatoes, turnip and rosemary, wrapped in our buttery whole-wheat pastry.
It isn't a Cornish pasty, though.
Today, the name Cornish Pasty is geographically protected, and we're very happy to leave Cornwall's culinary heritage exactly where it belongs.
We make handpies on Prince Edward Island.
Cornwall gets to keep its Cornish pasties.
We think that's only fair.
So Why Do We Call Them Handpies?
Because I wanted absolutely no mystery about what we were selling.
Before The Handpie Company, I owned my first restaurant, Scapes, and I spent an astonishing amount of time explaining one thing:
What's a garlic scape?
It turns out naming a restaurant after a vegetable most people have never heard of creates some extra work.
Lesson learned.
When handpies began taking over the business, I wanted the name of both the food and eventually the company to be incredibly straightforward.
They're handmade pies.
You hold them in your hand.
Handpies.
Even our logo, affectionately known around here as Handpie Guy, shows you what one looks like.
No lengthy explanation required.
And besides, calling them pasties in this part of the world would have created an entirely different problem.
A Cornish pasty is a glorious savoury meal wrapped in pastry. But over here, pasties (pronounced differently) are also the little adhesive covers used by burlesque performers and "midnight ballerinas" to keep their nipples under wraps.
Very different product category.
The Handpie That Started It All
The idea that eventually became The Handpie Company arrived in my kitchen in the winter of 2013.
I'd received Outlander Kitchen for my December birthday. I was already a fan of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books, and one recipe in particular caught my attention: Brianna's Bridies, a pork-and-potato handpie.
That sounded like something worth investigating.
So I headed to the Summerside Farmers' Market and loaded up on local ingredients.
Ground pork. PEI potatoes. ADL butter for the pastry. Beautiful flour from Kathy at Crystal Green Farms. And, because this was Prince Edward Island and we were clearly onto something good, a splash of local whisky.
The result was a fully local-ingredient masterpiece wrapped in pastry.
More importantly, it sparked an idea.
Prince Edward Island produces extraordinary ingredients. What if we wrapped them up in beautiful pastry and made them into complete meals you could take anywhere?
Handpies began appearing at Scapes.
Then people kept wanting more of them.
Over the next few years, the handpies gradually took over until eventually there was really only one sensible thing left to do.
Become The Handpie Company.
The Flavour That Stood the Test of Time
Those first pork handpies started the experiment, but another early creation became one of the handpies that would truly stick around.
Beet, Corn & Goat Cheese.
Before I was The Handpie Lady, I was a fine-dining chef, and the flavour combination came from a salad I used to make in restaurant kitchens.
Earthy roasted beets. Toasted corn. Tangy goat cheese.
Turns out it was also really, really good inside pastry.
More than a decade later, Beet, Corn & Goat Cheese remains part of our lineup and a direct little connection between my life as a restaurant chef and what we make today.
Why Do Our Handpies Have Six Crimps?
This might be my favourite part.
Look at a Handpie Company handpie and you'll see six crimps across the curved edge.
They aren't decorative machinery marks.
They're there because that's how my mother crimps a pie.
My mom is an incredible pie maker, although her pies have traditionally been full-sized and sweet rather than personal-sized and savoury. Her banana cream and lemon meringue are legendary in our family.
The lemon meringue in particular means enough to me that I have one tattooed on my arm!
Whenever I'd come home after working or travelling away, Mom would make me a lemon meringue pie to welcome me back.
So when I started making my own pies, my hands naturally followed hers.
As The Handpie Company grew, we standardized that familiar shape into the six-crimp Handpie Company handpie you see today. It's even represented in Handpie Guy, our logo.
Now we teach every new handpie crimper to make those same six crimps.
At first it takes concentration.
Then we help them build the muscle memory.
Eventually their hands just know.
We've gone from making handpies in a tiny restaurant kitchen to producing them in our own federally inspected manufacturing facility for grocery stores across Canada.
But there are still six crimps.
Some things are worth keeping.
What Actually Makes a Great Handpie?
For us, it starts with the pastry.
It needs to be buttery and flaky, because life's too short for disappointing pastry.
Ours is made with local whole-wheat flour and real butter, and after more than a decade of making it, our pastry has become as much a part of The Handpie Company identity as the fillings inside.
Then there's the filling.
A handpie isn't just a little pastry snack.
It should eat like a meal.
That means the filling needs to be hearty and satisfying, but there's also a technical consideration people don't necessarily think about: texture matters.
A handpie is designed to travel.
You should be able to take one to the beach, eat one at a brewery, bake one for dinner, pack one for an adventure or hold one in your hands without the entire filling immediately escaping onto your shirt.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how our fillings eat inside pastry.
Because ultimately, that's the job.
Fuel excellent adventures.
Is a Handpie a Pasty? An Empanada? A Samosa? A Tourtière?
This is one of our favourite conversations to have with customers.
People encounter a handpie and immediately connect it to something they already know and love.
We've heard stories about the empanadas someone's grandmother makes.
The tourtière they grew up eating every Christmas.
The Cornish pasties they remember.
Even the samosas and Caribbean doubles that our Curried Chickpea handpie brings to mind.
And we genuinely adore hearing them.
Because the more people we feed, the clearer something becomes:
The world loves savoury fillings wrapped in dough.
Different cultures use different pastry or dough. Different fats. Different shapes, fillings, spices and cooking methods. These foods have their own histories and traditions, and they're not interchangeable.
But they share a beautiful idea.
Take something delicious.
Wrap it up and feed somebody.
We're very happy for handpies to take their place in that rather wonderful global family.
Are Handpies Sweet or Savoury?
Both!
Although savoury handpies are what built The Handpie Company.
Our handpies are designed as complete meals, with fillings ranging from classic comfort food like Chicken Pot Pie and Bacon Cheeseburger to PEI Pasty, Curried Chickpea, BBQ Pulled Pork and plenty of other things we've dreamed up over the years.
We make sweet handpies too.
Because once you have excellent pastry, refusing to put dessert inside it would just be irresponsible.
How Do You Eat a Handpie?
This may be our easiest FAQ.
With your hands.
No plate required.
No cutlery required.
We sell hot handpies at our PEI shops that are ready to eat, and our frozen handpies are designed to go straight from the freezer to the oven.
They work beautifully for easy dinners, cottage freezers, road trips, breweries, beach days, busy families and those evenings when cooking dinner sounded like a much better idea several hours ago.
They're comfort food without much fuss.
Which was always the point.
So, What Is a Handpie?
After more than a decade and many, many thousands of handpies, here's our definition:
A Handpie Company handpie is a hearty, chef-made meal wrapped in buttery, flaky pastry, crimped by hand and built to go wherever you're going next.
It should taste like someone cared about making it.
It should fill you up.
And you should be able to eat it with your hands.
Pretty straightforward, really.
Which, after the whole garlic-scapes thing, is exactly how we like it.
Handpie FAQs
What is a handpie?
A handpie is a handheld pie made by enclosing a savoury or sweet filling inside pastry. Unlike a traditional pie that's sliced and served on a plate, a handpie is made to be picked up and eaten with your hands.
Is a handpie the same as a Cornish pasty?
Not exactly. A Cornish pasty is a specific traditional food with deep roots in Cornwall, England, and the name has protected geographical status. Handpie is a broader term for a handheld filled pie. We make a PEI-inspired PEI Pasty, but we'd never claim to make a Cornish pasty on Prince Edward Island.
Also, see our earlier warning regarding pasties.
Context matters.
Are handpies a meal or a snack?
Ours are very deliberately a meal. We build our savoury handpies around hearty chef-made fillings and substantial pastry so they're satisfying enough for lunch or dinner.
Can you bake handpies from frozen?
Absolutely. The Handpie Company's frozen handpies are designed to go straight from the freezer into the oven. No thawing required.
You can even air-fry them! Handpies love airfryers and the same steps can be followed. Preheat your air fryer to 375 degrees, slide your frozen handpie into the basket, and bake until golden and bubbly! Generally this takes 18-20 minutes.
Do you eat a handpie with your hands?
We certainly hope so.
It's right there in the name.
Ready to Try One?
You can find The Handpie Company at our shops on Prince Edward Island or check our Where to Buy page to find frozen handpies near you.
Grab one.
Heat it up.
Then go do something excellent.
We'll take care of dinner.
