How to Make Key Lime Pie

John Hi! This is Chef John from Foodwishes.com and I'm with my Mom, Pauline. Today we’re making some Key Lime Pie. And, that’s the fault of advertising because we don’t have any Key Lime, we use regular limes. But, anyway, we’ll see what happens here. So, step one, we’re going to get some ice water ready because this one is the secret of good pie crust. We got to have a very cold water, so that we could save time. Now, preheat it over a 400 doing some me two bakings here, we’re going to bake our crust to 400 and I want to turn it down and bake our pie later. So, here is Pauline’s crust recipe. She has 2 cups of pastry flour, is that right? Pauline That’s correct! John All right! Pastry flour, teaspoon of salt, and then ¾ of a cup of shortening. Now, we don’t want give a brand because Chris got in pay me any money. I just have Chris wouldn’t I? Pauline Yes! John All right! So, put in some ¾ of a cup of shortening. And then, with your pastry cutter and you also have one of these, you’re going to cut the fat into the flour. Now, see how she’s doing that? she just kind of mixes the flour around with the fat and just you chop down on it. And, here’s the kind of best kind of this rounded, pastry cutters you got, well, 4-5 blades on it. And, when it gets going you can just punch on it. And, if you want to go too much here, you want it really gravelly is the term they used the most. It looks like gravel. So, once we have to that stage, we’re going to end small additions here, we’re going to put in some ice water. And, she’s going to start with 5 tablespoons here and I just spread this out to save time. So, put in 5 tablespoons into your ice-cold water, really cold water. And then, with the tines of a fork, the top of the fork, you just slowly mix that out together. And again, that like many, many doze and biscuits and things like that. Over mixing is, will kills it. So, she’s been really careful here and she’s just mixing in until it just starts to come together. She’s going to use her hands here but the fork is not as hard as your hands. If you use your hands, it would start melting the fat. She decided that point that it needed another tablespoon of water. Now, she got to that stage. She decided it was ready to form into a very loose bowl. Is that the correct term? All right! So, she’s here kind of sweeping off any excess that you need to drive bits. She’s not mashing this all together. She’s just barely enough movement to get it into a bowl, just to hold together. What she’s going to do here is turn in out on to the table and that what she’s starts rolling. Now, in her silicon-baking mat, she put a little bit of flour, and she took half the dough. Now, here’s right I ask her if she’s going to let it rest and she said— Pauline No! I don’t let my nerves. John She doesn’t because she learned long time ago before the New Years’ so let it rest. So, why were you argue about that later and you can read that about on the site. But anyway, she took half that dough, put it right on the baking mat. Pressing to a six or seven inch round with her hand about an inch thick. And, if you get it in a shape first before you start rolling, you’re going to have a lot better success. Lot of people put a lamp down and they try to roll in, they wonder why it doesn’t come out round. So, she made that round already then she can take her rolling pin and flour it. And, now she when she starts rolling, see, she really does not have work to do. She’s going to roll it both directions until it’s a couple inches bigger that her pie. See, this is not very scientific. So, what do she said about just an 8th of an inch thick when you’re done? Pauline Between 8th and a quarter. Yes! John All right! So, she’s going to roll that out. now, to keep this on the pan, you don’t got to need any fancy baking pan just here. She just has a regular, supermarket, aluminum pie ten. Is that about 50 cents? Pauline Three for a dollar. John I'm no Mathematician but that’s 33 cents. You got to put half, fold in half. She puts it half way in and folds the other half over. Now, don’t worry about how need it looks because as you see, she’s going to just folding the excess underneath. Don’t worry how uneven it is because what she’s going to do is colt crimping the edges. And, you’ll see if you got a little too much on one spot, you put it on another spot. And, if you got a little bare spot, you just tear a piece and cover it. Those very soft imply able. Now, here is the famous crimping method. You take your fingers and you push one finger against the other, and you make this little kind of scalloped-edge effect here. I got the extreme close up. She’s just had her nails done. And, you go all the way around about every inch, you pinch you fingers together. Some people use a fork But I don’t like the fork because the edges burn. You have nice big thick ridges. See that? Nice job Mom. All right, now, what did you call this? Pauline Fluting. John Yes! Yes! The edges were fluted but now she’s pricking this with a fork. But there's a culinary term that doesn’t sound as offensive as pricking and we couldn’t thank of it but anyway, you're going to take the fork and you’ll gonna prick that dough so you don’t have a steam bubbles when you bake it. You wanna know one of the secrets. So, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna bake this crust before we had the filling and there’s your other half of dough. So, we made a double badge. You can put that in the oven, in the center of the oven for 400 degrees, 10-12 minutes until it’s golden brown. Let’s took about 11-12 minutes and see how it’s just lightly brown. Let’s see we’ll gonna bake half hour. So, that’s why you don’t want it all the way. But, that looks nice. We’re gonna allow this to cool completely before we had our filling. So, in the microwave, here’s another one of Pauline’s famous tricks, you gonna microwave those limes for about 10 seconds and then you will gonna get more roll on the table because limes, it’s a lot times you get much juice. And, you gonna get twice as much juice and you’ll gonna get twice as much juice this way with your three limes there? Pauline Three limes. John Okay! Three limes which she want it here was about a half cup of lime juice which she just got over them. And now, it’s gonna fill in together. Three whole eggs and one can of sweetened condensed milk whose how many ounces? Pauline Fourteen. John 14 ounces can of sweetened condensed milk. And, there is our lime juice being poured it in and, there you go. Take your mixture and just mix that well. Once that dissolve together, we’re gonna put in our secret ingredient. That’s right! Lime, coloring, green food coloring it’s gonna give that a beautiful key line color. One drop, if you put two drops you’re gonna have a science experiment. You don’t want this to this to be green, you just want to be just pale lime green. That’s seems the name. Pour it into your completely cooled pie crust. And then, you’ll gonna put it back in the oven that we put the temperature down to 350 for 30 minutes. Again, you got to check just until it set. If you over cook egg, a filling has eggs in it, it gets tough and bitter, and you don’t want that. So, that’s what just with a half hour was perfect. Let’s see how that’s puffed up a little bit. Is this cools see how it sinks down? So, that cools for at least an hour. You can put it on the fridge. You wanna serve this nice and cold. We want traditional here with the dollop of a sweeping with cream, a little shaving of the lime zest. And, that was really, really delicious. Anyway, you know the drill, go to the site. Get all the ingredients. We mentioned most of them. Read the article. And, for Pauline and I— Pauline Enjoy!