Blueberry Pie Tips and Tricks

Have you ever bitten into a runny, watery, tasteless blueberry pie on a gummy, underbaked crust? Me neither, because I would never eat such a thing. I kid, I kid! I'm no blueberry pie expert, but I do follow America's Test Kitchen's blueberry pie recipe to the letter. (Okay you'll see that this isn't true if you read the rest of this post.) This is my third time making this blueberry pie, and I think it's my favorite pie of all time! Unpaid plug for ATK over.

So I don't have pictures of the crust-making process, because no one likes to play the "Guess how many sticks of butter went into your food" game. So just trust me when I say when I made pie crusts last summer without my stand mixer, my wrists hurt for a week.

Tip #1: Cook down half of the blueberries on the stove. This recipe requires a total of 6 cups of blueberries.
Cook them on medium heat until they're about a jam-like consistency. This concentrates the blueberry flavor, and evaporates some liquid so your pie won't be runny. I cooked mine a little too long because I was distracted, but oh well, at least the filling won't overflow.

Uncooked other 3 cups of blueberries. Add a bit of sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and....

Tip #2: Minute tapioca! This stuff is really strange. It comes in a red box in the aisle with jello mix. Add 2 tablespoons (yes, that's a 2 teaspoon measure in the picture. Pop quiz: how many teaspoons in a tablespoon?)

Tip #3: The secret ingredient is an apple!

The recipe calls for a granny smith apple, as is classic in baking. But all I had was an old Fuji lying around, so I used it. Besides, granny smiths were like, $1.99 per pound at Safeway. Does anyone consider the costs of cooking these days? It's a legitimate limiting factor.

Grate the apple. Then squeeze the grated bits to get rid of all the juice. You only want the pulp, because it has pectin to firm up the filling. Again, we're combating wateriness here!

When you've got all the blueberries mixed together (after cooling, of course), pull out your crusts from the freezer. That's Tip #4--no, the cardinal rule: things that are suppose to be flaky and full of butter require the freezer.

Tip #5: Make a lattice crust. This is so more liquid can evaporate, which is especially important in berry pies (not so much apple pie, but I do it because it's pretty!).

Tip #6: Heat a baking sheet in the oven before setting the pie on it. This is so that the bottom crust can cook evenly. It's also to prevent blueberry goo from spilling over the edge into your oven. Rotate and turn down heat halfway through baking.

WHEW. That was a lot so far.

As an experiment, I decided to use up the leftover bits of crust dough to make a mini blueberry pie. Like a cup pie. (WHY DID THEY CANCEL PUSHING DAISIES, WHYYYY?!)

All that went into this little one:
crust
blueberries

No sugar, no tapioca, no lemon zest, no apple. I thought to myself, do all of those extra steps and ingredients really make that big of a difference? What about just baking blueberries in a crust? That should still taste good, right? RIGHT?

One hour later...out of the oven.

Mmm. Closeup.
I'm bringing this to lab tomorrow, to celebrate my researcher's (early) birthday. I'm worried about the knife damaging my pie pan, so maybe I'll have it pre-cut? But then it won't be pretty. Dilemma!

This little mini cup-pie didn't turn out too badly. It was a little on the bland/tart side, but not runny! But probably not something that would translate well to a full-scale pie.

In the end, I prefer blueberries in their fresh, unadulterated state. YUMMY.

Last tip: Don't use a wooden spoon to stir blueberries. That stuff stains. Sigh.