Well, it has been awhile since I posted a new recipe so I thought I would add one of my new favorites. I enjoy watching Alton Brown’s show Good Eats on the Food Network and one day he told about how to make a frozen blueberry pie. Now I like blueberry pie so I was really interested in this one. I followed along and thought “I can make that, it doesn’t look hard and it looks really good.”
Sure enough, I was able to make not 1 but 3 different Frozen Blueberry Pies. Now if you want to follow Alton’s recipe you can click this link to find it: frozen blueberry pie
I made some changes along the way, left out some of his ingredients, changed others and it still tastes excellent. You use all the same main ingredients, blueberries, sugar, salt, flour but I left out the orange juice and orange zest. My wife and others that have tasted it say it still is the best pie they have had in a long time.
So here are the main ingredients
approximately 4 cups blueberries
approximately 1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
approximately 5 tablespoons flour
2 (9-inch) store-bought pie doughs (required if you want to make the pie right away, otherwise they are optional for this part)
Where I am, blueberries come in two size containers, a pint (about 2 cups) and a quart (about 4 cups) so you can plan accordingly. I did make a pie once with 4 cups of blueberries but I think that was too much. Next time I cut it back to 3 cups. Alton’s recipe called for Tapioca flour but I used all purpose flour. Tapioca flour is better for freezing but I did not notice any real difference so if you cannot find it in your local store no worries.
To make the pie you just mash up half of the blueberries, add the sugar salt and flour and mix them all up. Add in the remaining blueberries and fold them into the mixture.
Once done, line a 9″ pie dish with aluminum foil, trying to get all the little creases out of the foil to make it easier to remove from the blueberries when you are ready to bake the pie. Pour in the mixture and fold the excess foil around the outside of the pie dish. This will keep it out of the way while the blueberries freeze.
Place the filled pie dish in the freezer so ir is flat and leave for 8 hours undisturbed.
Once frozen through, fold the aluminum foil over the blueberries, wrap it in plastic wrap, place it in a gallon freezer zip lock bag and put it back in the freezer until you are ready to bake the pie.
When you are ready to bake the pie, you can use the two store bought pie crusts or, for a better flavor, make your own. Roll the dough out so you have a top and bottom. Now, here there are two schools of thought. One is to pre-bake your pie shell, let it cool then add the frozen blueberries, put the top on, add some slits or vent holes (or even a lattice top) and bake it at 325 degrees for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It make take a little less if you pre-bake the shell and it may take a little longer if you don’t.
Once it is done and out of the oven, let it cool for at least 20 minutes. I know, it will be hard but it will be worth it. Oh, and you should use an egg wash to brush on the pie crust top prior to baking so it gets that golden brown crust and you can even add some sugar to make it a little sweeter.
As I write this, we are having an alternate spring so blueberries are in the stores again but if you want to have blueberry pie year round give this a try, you won’t be sorry.