The Perfect Pie Crust

Pie crust: that mystic endeavor that all of our grandmothers seem to have down pat, but is somehow lost on the next few generations. People tip toe around the process, avoiding the risk at all cost, resorting to frozen ready-made crusts, or worse yet, skipping out on pie completely- all for fear of the crust.

In making pie crusts, recipes (and cooking shows) advise to proceed with caution, and for those of you who have taken the leap, you probably know why. Pie crust gone wrong is not a pleasant thing to eat, something along the lines of hardtack.

It doesn’t have a lot ingredients or steps, but it does have a fair amount of room for error.

I did a ton of research, and I uncovered a million little tricks, most of which proved completely superfluous. A few of them however, really make a difference.

These tweaks shorten the margin of error a smidgen. For instance the cornmeal adds a kind of faint almost imperceptible crunch, adding significantly to a sensation of flakiness, but despite my tweaks, there’s still fair amount of trial and error required. Keep in mind its important to keep ALL of your ingredients cold, as it limits how the fat is incorporated into the dry ingredients (imperative to flakiness)

And don't let a failed attempt get you down, when you master the pie crust, you can do anything.

So prepare yourself, here we go:

1 ½ cups All purpose Flour

½ cup Fine ground corn meal

½ cup Whole Wheat Flour

1 tbsp Sugar

1 tsp Salt

½ lb. Butter, unsalted (2 sticks), cut into ¼ tbsp pieces and tossed in flour

5 tbsps Ice water (+ more as needed)

Optional: 1 cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese

1. Pulsing in a food processor, mix the dry ingredients well. Stick the whole bowl for the food processor in the fridge.

2. Once chilled, put the bowl back on its base. Separate the prepared butter in half, add it to the processor and, again in pulses, buzz until almost completely incorporated. It should look a little sandy.

3. Now separate the remaining butter in half again. Pulse in the first half until slightly incorporated (pea sized pieces), then pulse in the remaining butter until barely incorporated at all.

4. This is the important step, don’t add too much moisture! Also this is where you’d add the grated cheddar it you're going to.

Transfer this mixture to a bowl, using a plain tablespoon sprinkle about three spoons of water (the spoons for measuring tend to drop big splashes of water, you don’t want that) using your hand lightly toss the dough. Add the remaining water and toss lightly but thoroughly. Squeeze a portion of the mix in your hand, if it clumps together, your pie crust is ready.

{Alton Brown actually uses a spritzer in this step, I love this concept as it perfectly and evenly distributes the least amount of moisture needed)

5. Separate the mix into halves and pack them into fat discs. Wrap the dough balls individually in plastic and stick them in the fridge for at least an hour. (this resting time allows the moisture to distribute evenly)

Thaw them out before rolling.

Your perfect pie crust is ready to go.

***If you're really into this, you should watch this 2 part video.

Alton Brown breaks the whole idea of crust down and discusses options. By far the best resource I found in my search.

For those of you that don't get the news letter, the final destination for this crust (with the cheddar) was a chicken pot pie.

A dinner to remember . . . . I wish I could!

I seldom just sit down and recount what I made at a specific dinner, I guess I think it seems a little self-promoting, but for some reason I'm making an exception this time.
A friend of mine procured some high-brow Italian wines. Here's the catch, they had already been opened, so we had to drink them asap.
I was charged with the responsibility of whipping up some solid wine food.
So here's what I came up with.

To start:
Apple and fennel salad with Parmigiano-Reggiano and soft boiled farm eggs

Exactly what it says, with lemon juice and olive oil

Nantucket bay scallops with preserved lemon, pickled onion and Celtic rock salt

Those scallops are wild caught, they are so delicious.

For the main course:
Seared tuna belly with crispy sage over cabbage braised in beet juice.


The tuna belly at the lobster place is always calling out to me. This was great dish.

Roasted Squab with potato and carrot confit

I kinda overcooked the breasts, but they were still delicious.

Braised pork belly with celery root puree.


The squab and pork belly I scored at Dickson's meat. They have a really good product.



The wines were exceptional and the company was good. At least what I can remember of it. The four of us killed almost seven bottles of wine, and I'm still paying the price.
Still, nights like those are my favorites.
You never know when you're going to make a memory, or forget one.

Good food with good people . . . a little wine doesn't hurt either. . . until the next day anyways.

A few notes on the paradox of recipe writing and reading

Writing recipes can be a very tough thing.
Why do we do it?
Ideally it’s a template that can be recreated over and over with perfect consistency, but nature doesn’t give us perfectly consistent ingredients to work with. So in reality it’s just a guideline, a rough draft of a dish that one must edit.

In writing recipes, I try hard to find the best middle ground. Giving the cook enough info for inspiration, but with room for preferential variation. Please know that I think of my recipes as foundations on which to build. Read them knowing that I hope you take license, and let me know if it works (or if it doesn’t). My goal with Grill-A-Chef is to encourage people to cook, and that takes a little experimentation and awareness. As the cook it’s your job to adjust for nature’s inconsistency.

Back to the recipes:
The trickiest part is in the quantities. They’re where every recipe starts, but how does one decide whether to list a whole ingredient or a processed (cut, cooked, grated, etc.) ingredient?
One recipe might say “4 medium potatoes”. In this instance, the quantity used can vary greatly with the size of the potato. Not to mention the problem that the word “medium” poses. How big is medium potato? And is that relative to all potatoes in the world, or just in the pile of potatoes at your market?
Another recipe might say “3 cups of potatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes.” This is a much more specific quantity, but how many potatoes will this require? And what do I do with the extra potato?
You may have noticed that my recipes vary completely in how they are written. How I choose to write it is purely circumstantial. If I say “4 medium potatoes” the required amount is somewhat elastic, though I’ll usually follow that up with an approximation of volume. If I say, “3 cups of potatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes,” then you need that amount.
**** I realize that I sometimes stray from my own rules.

Next on my list of peaves is the ingredient that you have to buy a whole bottle of for just one teaspoon. I’m a cook, so my pantry has a plethora of rare items that I use regularly. Still, I try to recognize these when they come up and isolate them as optional.
In other words, I try to avoid putting the cook in a position where she has buy something she’ll never use again.

Execution of a recipe can vary exponentially. People have different stovetops, different pots and pans, even different lighting under which they see the food. Over time my goal has become describe what the final product of each step should be, and then lay a map of how to get there. Including times and heat ranges that are only approximate.

I usually end a recipe with some ideas for substitutions, interesting additions, and general advice. Which I hope is helpful.

Please let me know an thoughts or questions on this subject.

Holiday Series

Hey there readers,
In the next few weeks I'm gonna execute a Holiday series. Covering individually the major bits and pieces of a holiday meals.
Some traditional, and some not so traditional.
If there are any requests, please hit me up.
thechefs@grillachef.com