Arkansas · Dessert
Arkansas Fried Pies
- Intermediate
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- For the pastry: 375g flour, 1 tsp salt, 170g cold butter or shortening, 120ml cold buttermilk
- For the filling: 300g dried apricots or peaches, 250ml water, 100g sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- Neutral oil for frying
- Icing sugar
Equipment
Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
Pie crust & blind bakingDeep fryingChilling to firm: the fridge as binderMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the dried fruit with the water and sugar until soft and thick, 20 min, then mash and cool. 20 min
- Cut the fat into the flour and salt, bind with buttermilk, and chill 30 min. 30 min
- Roll the pastry thin and cut 12cm rounds. Spoon fruit onto one half, fold over, and crimp the edges hard with a fork.
- Fry in 180C oil 2-3 min a side until deep gold and blistered. 3 min
- Drain and dust with icing sugar while warm.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
At the Table
- The Pour
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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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