This is apple pie like you had on grandma’s table. The real deal. Piled high in a deep dish, wrapped up in your own homemade pie crust. Old-fashioned. No weird stuff. Just wildly delicious, perfectly simple apple pie.
There’s a lot of debate about the best apples for apple pie–Golden Delicious or Granny Smith or whatever else is your favorite will do here, but my favorite kind of apples for apple pie is whatever kind of apples I can get for free. I made two pies in the past week from our “pig apples” that we got for free from the grocery store that is giving us their “old” produce. We got a big box of apples. Some of them weren’t even bruised, so they turned into pies. (You wouldn’t believe the stuff they throw away! The photo of apples at the top of this post? Those are some of my “pig” apples!)
I don’t like skimpy pies (or skimpy anything), so I tend to gravitate to a lot of deep dish recipes. I found this one a few years back that came from an old, old Woman’s Day magazine. It was almost perfect, but not quite. I had to make a few changes. I think I’ve finished “perfecting” it. (If you don’t have a favorite apple pie recipe yet, give this one a try.)
How to make Deep Dish Apple Pie:
Pastry for double-crust pie
9 cups (3 pounds) sliced apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Peel, core, and slice apples.
Place in a large bowl. After the first several cups of sliced apples are in the bowl, add the tablespoon of lemon juice and stir it up. This will keep the apples from browning while you’re slicing the rest. Once all the apples are in the bowl, add the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Stir well to blend. Line a deep dish pie plate with the pastry. Fill it up. Pile it on. Lay it on thick.
Put the top crust on, crimping edges. Cut slits to vent.
Brush the top with a little bit of egg white if you like and sprinkle with sugar.
I like to sprinkle it with turbinado sugar for that bit of extra old-fashioned flavor.
This looks amazing already and I haven’t even baked it yet.
Bake on the lowest oven rack–20 minutes at 425-degrees, then another 20-25 minutes at 375-degrees.
Thank God for apples. Especially the free ones.
P.S. This pie also works well if you want to make variations like apple-blueberry, apple-walnut, apple-raisin, etc, whatever strikes your fancy. You can add up to one cup of blueberries, nuts, raisins, etc and still fit it in a deep dish. (Any more than that and you have to decrease the apples.)
And–don’t forget the ice cream!
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Posted by Suzanne McMinn on June 11, 2009
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My Granny Nichols use to make her pie crust from lard. Oh it would just flake off and was so good. The smell of the cinnamon in the kitchen and those pies, still brings back memories. Home-made vanilla ice cream anyone?
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Makes me want to bake a pie today….but it will have to wait until Saturday. Sure looks good, though!
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My brother makes an awesome apple pie….his trick is to put the pie in the microwave — yes microwave — until it starts bubbling, then put into 350 oven to brown it up perfectly. Truly amazing!! This will make the most nonflaky crust flaky (and takes some time off before you can dollop some ice cream on and enjoy!).
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On a farm note: we turned our beef bulls out with The Girls yesterday. Now all are happy (hormones rule). Bulls are large beasts.
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We used to get produce from the grocery store my DIL worked. Our piggies loved their treats.
Many times I would pick over the produce/fruit and keep some for use to use. Whole trays of strawberries, apples, onions, you name it.
You might try making some applesauce with some of those apples. Freeze until fall. Yummy!
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When I was a kid in Missouri, my Granny made cobblers out of every kind of fruit you could find….but her cobblers had three layers of delicious crust…one on the bottom, one in between the fruit and the one on the top. That’s how I make peach, apple, blackberry and cherry cobblers. Too wonderful for words!
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