secret ingredient pie crust

January 10th, 2010 · 5 Comments

Consider yourselves lucky. My mom emailed Cook’s Illustrated on my behalf and asked if I could post a recipe or two from their site (you know, legally and such). And they said yes, up to two per month! And you know what that means? PIE! Or rather, pie crust. Delicious, flaky, easy, perfect-every-time, no-more-guessing-about-consistency pie crust. Oh, and easy to roll out, too. And tasty. Did I mention that even my non-foodie friends recognize that this is something special?Enough babbling already. I’ll get on with it.When I serve pie to my friends and they graciously compliment me on the pastry crust, I often tell them that I will give them $5 if they can guess the secret ingredient. I’ll tell them that it has five letters, that it’s something that they’ve never heard of putting into pie crust, and that it has no taste. I invariably get the answer, “Water!” Nice try, but all pastry crusts have water. Guess again!

Cook’s Illustrated explains their choice of the secret ingredient at length in their introduction to the recipe. Pie crusts fall somewhere between gloriously flaky and rather ungloriously dense. There are a couple of things that can make a pie crust dense. One: handling it too much. You always want to use a light touch with the dough. Two: too much water. The problem is, water is what allows you to roll the pastry out without it crumbling into a hundred pieces. A dilemma for anyone, but Cook’s Illustrated has found the solution: Vodka! Vodka has the important qualities of water (tasteless, wet) but it evaporates in cooking, meaning that the water isn’t really there! So there you have it. Go to the store and buy a huge bottle of vodka, because once you make this pie crust, you’ll never go back to another recipe again.

pie crust

2 1/2 cups of flour, divided (I store mine in the freezer to keep it as cold as possible)
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tsp salt
8 oz (two sticks) cold butter, cut into pieces (best if you can freeze this for 30 minutes before adding to the other ingredients)
1/2 cup cold Crisco shortening (best if you can freeze this for 30 minutes before adding to the other ingredients)
1/4 cup cold water (I put a large glass of ice water in the freezer for 15 minutes before using so that the water is ice cold)
1/4 cup cold vodka (again, directly from the freezer is best)

In a food processor, pulse together 1 1/2 cups of flour, sugar, and salt.

Add cold butter and Crisco and pulse 5 or 6 times until mixed.

Add remaining 1 cup of flour and pulse 5 or 6 times until mixture resembles coarse pea-sized crumbs. Place mixture in a separate bowl. Add water and vodka and using a spatula, gently blend just until all the flour is mixed in. Do not over mix.

Spread out two pieces of plastic wrap and divide the dough between these two sheets. No need to make them pretty.

Fold the plastic wrap and press the dough into 4″ squares. Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days. See my entry on rolling out pastry doughs.

Tags: dessert

5 responses so far ↓

1 Ginny // Aug 25, 2011 at 2:18 pm

They made empandas on their show yesterday and put tequila in the dough mixture since it was a Mexican dish. I love that magazine and show!
2 Marie-Eve // Aug 5, 2012 at 7:05 pm

Did you ever make it with all butter instead of crisco? Can’t wait to try this vodka trick!
3 Paula // Aug 6, 2012 at 1:31 am

Nope… I always use half crisco and half butter just because I hear that each plays a role in the chemistry of the dough. I think the original recipe calls for twice as much butter but I simply could not bear to introduce that much saturated fat into my arteries at one time.
4 lisa k // Nov 1, 2013 at 11:16 am

Alton Brown uses a squirt bottle to mist the liquid over the flour mix. I started to do that with the vodka water mix. It distributes the liquid more effectively and thus less working the dough trying to distribute that clump where the liquid hit. hope that makes sense.
5 Paula // Nov 1, 2013 at 8:21 pm

Lisa, neat idea but I’m not sure that I’m that patient. As it is, don’t tell anyone but I add all the liquid in the kitchen aid and hope for the best that i’m not overworking the dough by just letting it go around a few times. Pie dough is one of my *least* favorite things to make so I try to make it as painless as possible.