Key Lime Pie
This is a basic recipe for key lime pie. It's good. It's solid. And it's enough.
Equipment
- 1 Pie Plate, 9", Glass
- 1 whisk
- 1 Grater, Microplane
Ingredients
Piegoo
- 6 ea key limes
- 4 ea egg yolks
- 14 oz milk, sweetened condensed (1 can)
- 4 fl oz juice, key lime
Graham Cracker Crust
- 262 g crackers, graham, the honey kind roughly 18 crackers
- 4 oz butter, salted
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°
Crust Prep
- Destroy your Graham crackers in a gallon size zip top bag by placing the crackers in a bag, mostly sealing it (leave an opening the silent screams of the crushed crackers, or what you may call "air" to leave the bag) and roll over your crackers with a rolling pin, pressing down with a fair amount of force. This really works well for me. It's more satisfying to use Teddy Grahams, but the texture is wrong and they don't taste as good.
- Nuke your butter until melted. I do it 30 seconds at a time as butter being nuked is not to be trusted.
- Mix your Graham cracker dust with your butter. It'll be dry and crumbly.
- Mush into your pie pan. I like to level mine with the bottom of a drinking glass and then rolling it along the angled side of the pan for uniformity. I like my crust roughly 1/4" thick. As always, you do you.
- You will have extra. That's OK. You can reserve some to sprinkle on top. You'll probably still have extra. Better to have too much than too little.
- Bake it for about 10 minutes.
- Let it rest for about half an hour. That'll give you time for Pie Goo Prep!
Piegoo Prep
- Zest and juice your key limes. It's a bitch if you have large hands and arthritis, but you know what? It's totally worth it.
- Whisk your zest and egg yolks together. Depending on your Whisk-Fu, it may take some time. You want the yolkzest to be come "ribbony and slightly pale, but not full on sabayon. That's just madness. You aren't trying to incorporate air, create a semi-emulsion without oil.Find something to do with the whites. You could make meringue for the top of this pie if you want. I won't be held responsible. More Whisk-Fu hijinks than I care for in a day.
- Add your sweetened condense milk. Get it homogeneous.
- Add your lime juice. Get it homogeneous.
- Pull out your whisk, leave it on the counter, and walk away for about half an hour. It will set up, though not hard.
Showtime
- After the crust has cooled and the goo has set in the bowl, pour the pie goo into the shell. Bake until the goo sets again but is not firm. It should still "tremble" in the middle when jarred gently from the side. Really about 10 minutes or so.
- Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before service. Garnish with leftover buttergrahamstuff. Or whipped cream. Or meringue if you are ambitious enough.
Notes
OK, so here we go. This is a very classic recipe. I've seen quite a few out there and they are needlessly fussy with all manner of ingredients that don't belong in the classic dish.
Now a good food blogger would give you some kind of history of the pie, but I'm new and have plausible deniability. What I am going to tell you is this:
You do not need to bake this pie. It's an icebox pie. The truth is, the key lime juice is so acidic, nothing can live in it. It's basically egg yolk ceviche if you want to get right down to it. I mean, I wouldn't add raw shrimp, but you know, you do you.
As I understand it, people started baking this pie when salmonella entered the factory poultry farms and so people started baking it for the illusion of safety.
To kill the pesky little bacteria, your medium (food) needs to be heated to 165° for 15 seconds. If you bake a key lime pie at 350° until that hot for that long, you will crack the top at best, have lime flavored quiche at the worst (maybe the shrimp would be good).
Now you could bake it at a lower temp and take your chances, but I don't think it's worth it. 10 minutes at 350° is enough to get the "tremble" and satisfy the people who gladly licked the bowl when you were making it but would never eat it raw out of a crust.
I just can't tell you not to bake it because you could get sick and sue me for what little I have and the world is litigious enough. So bake it. Just know you aren't actually killing anything.
Happy cooking!
Nutrition
Serving: 1sliceCalories: 410kcal
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