BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Desserts Apple Pie recipes

I am always confused on the kind of apples best to use in apple pie. Everytime I try using a variety of apples, either it comes too dry or too runny with a lot of water?????
Can anyone explain this? Does anyone have a great apple pie crust that does not get soggy at the botton? Thanks. Vicky

Granny Smith apples are tarter and drier. You can always put lots of topping on when it's dry.

I've tried Granny Smith, but my family doesn't like the tartness, instead like sweet pies.

I like to use a variety of apples, and find that Granny Smith, which are tart, are great paired with Fugi, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, and Jonagold. Red delicious are not good cooking apples.

I've found that my apple pies turn out better if I cook the apples a little first like in the pie recipe that I just posted BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

i use a combo of fuji with granny smith and golden delicious.

another thing you can do is sugar the apples and let them drain in a collindar for an hour. Then you boil down the juice and make a syrup you mix with lemon juice and place in the apples with sugar and cinnamon.

Jase,
I have used Golden Delicious before and it produced a lot of water. Do you have this power? Thanks. VIcky

Vicky, another thing you can do to help keep your crust from getting soggy is to partially bake it "blind" - this means without filling, before you add the apples to it.

What you will want to do is line your piecrust with some aluminum foil and fill it with either pie weights that you can buy from a cook's store like Sonoma Williams - or for a cheaper solution you can use dried beans (like kidney beans).

The pie weights will help distribute the heat a little better, but they are a little expensive if you don't bake much.

So anyway, turn your oven to 350, line your piecrust with foil, fill the bottom with beans, and bake for about 15 minutes. It will be kind of a light golden color - just stsrting to dry out a little. Be mixing your pie filling while this is baking, then after the 15 minutes - add your pie filling and bake as usual.

To keep your crust edges from getting too brown, keep some foil crimped around the outside untilk the last 10 minutes of baking. Then take the foil off, and it will golden up just like the rest of the pie.

that is why i sugar and allow to drain for an hour. This helps remove some water and helps dry out them some so the water that is produced isn't too much. ALso I dust them in tapiocca flour as well to help gel the juices. you have to let the pie cool for 4 hours if you are using tapiocca