Non-Runny Apple Pie

I’ve made apple pies, apple crisps, etc. before and love them all.  However I always seem to have issue arise that bothers the heck out of me – they are runny!  While I and those I serve it to love the flavor, it’s frustrating and embarrassing to have it be so runny.

For thanksgiving this year, I was asked to bring an apple pie.  Now the “easy” move is to just buy one, but that goes against what I stand for and hurts my pride just a bit…  Plus I know that I can produce a better tasting product for the same price or less than store-bought most of the time.  Though I was getting nervous – I didn’t want to serve another runny apple pie…

So I did what any distraught cook would do – check the internet for what others have done.  ha!  I have tried to find a solution to a runny apple pie before but never came up with much advice.  And I was getting the same answers this time – bake it longer, or use a different apple, or use flower in your apple coating.  I’m sure those ideas work, but just didn’t seem to be the right solution.

So a bit more searching, and I found a recipe that seemed unique enough to what I’ve done in the past that just might do the trick, and figured why not give it a try.  After all, it is from the Food Network who I do have culinary respect for.

There are two techniques from this recipe that I was not doing before that after executing this recipe I now understand are critical to a runny free apple pie:

1. Sauté the apples in a pan.  This does two things:
   1. It unlocks some of the juices from the apple and releases them into the pan.
   2. It softens the apples a bit, which solves a second issue of the apples being too hard and crisp, or under-cooked by baking only.
2. Create a syrup from the apple liquids.  Using the liquids above, cook separate from the apples with sugar until you caramelize the liquids and thus create a bit of a syrup.

In my case, the syrup was still a bit runny while assembling the pie and even when I pulled it out of the oven.  However as the pie cooled so did the syrup and it turned into a perfect pie filling – full of flavor with a thick and consistent syrup to bind the well cooked apples together.

So there you go – those are my lessons learned.  As for the recipe, I’m not going to re-type it since the Food Network are the real geniuses behind it, so you can find the link below.  The recipe includes the crust from scratch, which I’m always a fan of doing and have to thank my lovely wife for taking care of that part for this Thanksgiving.  I hope you have the same success as I have!

Non-Runny Latice Apple Pie Recipe

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/lattice-crust-apple-pie.html