The Perfect Imperfections of Blueberry Pie

The worst blueberry pie I ever made was from a recipe calling for arrowroot. The inside was like blueberry soup. The America's Test Kitchen people suggest using potato starch, and I've had much better luck with that as a thickener.

I prefer the taste and texture of Minute tapioca and a buttery crumb topping with an oil-based crust (fast, low cholesterol, press-in-pan). Jacques Pepin has been using potato starch in lieu of arrowroot because it is less expensive and more available. Your recipe is too much work and takes too much time. My pies usually comes out just fine.

All the pie crust recipes I have tried from cookbooks had too much fat and were greasy, including Julia Child's. The recipe I use is from a friend who has made pies for decades, and collaborated with another friend to develop the recipe. It is very "short," and ideally should be rolled out on parchment paper to facilitate transfer to the pie plate. For a 10-inch pie: 3 cups flour, 4 ounces (1 stick) butter, 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 to 2 tblsp. sugar (optional for a sweet crust), 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 cup very cold water. Put cut-up butter and oil in freezer for half an hour before assembling. This size pie requires 5 pints of blueberries. I use tapioca and cornstarch, but will give arrowroot a try.

Tapioca is easy to use and works. Follow the recipe on the boxes website for measurement instructions, you can't go wrong.

so many great ideas, variants

How can I print the comments, with the article?

I've never been able to print the comments.

Blue-Berries: It was 1957, I was 10, and they let us loose, each one with a metal pail, to collect as many of the little, fat suckers we could find; of course, it took longer than expected, because we were eating up much of what we had gathered. We made it back by late afternoon and handed over the blueberries to the cook.
Dinner was okay, but dessert was special. Tart, Runny, sometimes too crusty, but we didn’t care. We were all wiping our purplish-blue mouths clean, licking our chops, and we didn’t care whether the pies were prepared with the proper, healthy ingredients, baked at the right temperatures, and left to cool for the prescribed time.
“Smoke on your pipe and put that in.” (“West Side Story”, Miss Rita.)

8 cups of blueberries? Really? In LA that could mean $50 worth of blueberries. We have to use frozen - and then the advice to make sure they're dry becomes a little problematic. TJ's has blueberries they call "boreal" - very small compared to regular blueberries. Anybody know anything about them for pies? They do make great sorbet, but need lime to give them a hint of tang.

Overall, this recipe seems incredibly complicated, starting with the multiple refrigerations and freezings. Who has room in a side-by-side freezer to put a whole pie, level, with nothing jammed up against it or falling into it?

But I bet it does turn out a great pie - and blueberry isn't my favorite by a long shot - just too bland, almost tasteless, though actually it's just a little too subtle.

My wife makes a delicious blueberry pie, that always seems to have to right consistency and flavor. She uses 1/8 cup of rolled oats as a thickener. She adds it to the berries and also dusts the bottom crust with oatmeal flakes before adding the berries. The oatmeal adds a subtle richness that flour and arrowroot don't. (Tapioca, to me, makes the pie too gummy although it has a better flavor than either flour or arrowroot.) She combines 1/4 c. light brown sugar with 1/4 c. white, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, pinch of nutmeg with the oatmeal. She first squeezes the juice of 1/2 lemon over the berries before adding the remaining dry ingredients. Once the berry mixture is in the piecrust she tops it with 5 small dabs of butter. Her pie is the best!

oh, come on: exotic ingredients, pre-baking, pre-cooking some berries, special crust-butter preferred, . . . what am I forgetting?!

my mother's blueberry pie recipe, which matches this one only in picking over a quantity of berries, came from an early Betty Crocker cookbook, and it's wonderful, complete w/ a lattice crust made w/ veggie Crisco that no, I don't know how to weave, but it still looks (and tastes) great. and it's not a day's work.

I'm curious about the anchor cutout on the picture of the pie. How is that "seasonally appropriate"?

Where do you get arrowroot?

Runny blueberry pie confirms that it is Real.

I always eat the blueberries and then I'm so sad not to have any for the pie.

Thickening hint: use a small amount of Instant Tapioca, but make sure to crush/pulverize the tapioca bits first. Instant Tapioca is already somewhat pulverized, but you can improve on that by crushing further. Finer bits--practically powder--will give you gentle thickening without any revolting random little blobs of gelatinous tapioca marring your filling. Use a mallet or a mini-chopper. In addition: cut back on the lemon juice. The two tablespoons called for in the NYT recipe is way too much. Start with a teaspoon or so and add more to taste, but if you go overboard, you will have unpleasantly acidic filling. Also, add the tiniest pinch of cinnamon, gentle Ceylon cinnamon, please, not the violently hot type. You can get Ceylon cinnamon from Penzey's and others. And make sure the blueberries are absolutely dry before you mix them with sugar, etc. And you might want to add a little brown sugar to the white, while you're at it, it deepens the flavor. One last suggestion: add a few slices of peeled peach or nectarine to the blueberries. They go together well, and are beautiful too.

One word: tapioca.

To the consternation of my recipe-wanting kids, I'm always riffing on ingredients. I never do anything twice! When I'm here at my cabin in the Woods that's often due to necessity - not invention. I bought what looked like a lot of blueberries at the farmers market but realized a pie filling needs to be really mounded up before baking. So I added an almost equal quantity of diced rhubarb and then couldn't resist grating a little fresh ginger into the mix. Behold! The portmanteau pie - Bluebarb! God, it's good!

I use tapioca flour. It has worked every time.

Blueberry pies are one of my favourite childhood memories. I grew up in a mining town surrounded by fields which, in season, were blue with wild blueberries. They were small, dark and very sweet. My father and I would pick them after dinner and my mother, who was from a large French-Canadian family and could make masterpieces from just about any food, would make pies. She used her usual crust, with some openings on top, and just the blueberries and sugar as the filling. Mmmmm! I assume that the secret to her perfect pies was those small, dark, sweet and very fresh wild blueberries, but maybe it was love.

With all due respect to Miriam Foster, I actually like the taste of flour in the blueberry filling. She is right: it does taste like flour. But that's a hearty, wholesome counterpoint to the sweet, fruity overtones of the filling. I suppose I am fond of that flavor because my mother sprinkled whole wheat flour over the blueberries in her pies. At the time, I thought there was nothing more glorious! I guess it's hard to beat nostalgia when it comes to comfort foods.

I have been baking pies and cakes for over 45 years. Blueberry is my all-time favorite, and I've made a few already this season.

For what it's worth, here's my recipe:

2 pints of blueberries sweetened with half a cup of sugar, flour (less than a quarter cup) as a thickener, dash of cinnamon and some lemon juice. Let that sit for at least an hour to sweeten.

Crust: 2 cups unbleached flour, tsp. salt, 2/3 cup Crisco (cut into flour with pastry blender until crumbly), approx. 1/2 cup cold water added gradually and blended in with fork.

Roll out bottom crust, fill with BB, top with 4 pats of butter, cover with top crust. Bake at 325 deg. for 30 min. Raise oven temp to 450 and bake for approx. 25-30 min.

Enjoy!

A late relative used to make a great blueberry pie by shaking the berries in a bag with flour and sugar, dumping them into a pie shell and then pouring whole milk over them. It actually worked - an instant blueberry cream pie.

This year I used Dorie Greenspan's tips for filling: macerate the berries a while with a half a cup of sugar. Taste how sweet and observe how juicy the berries are and add more sugar if necessary and increase the amount of flour if they seem especially juicy. Also sprinkle fine dried breadcrumbs on the bottom of the crust. It turned out very good. This year's berries were great. Makes up for no local peaches this year.

Here's my tip: mix it up a little. Thanks to a previous owner, my small yard contains 19 blueberry bushes and 9 types. What to do? For my last pie, I heaped in four or five types with some lemon juice, a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg, sugar but not too much, and cornstarch plus flour to thicken (not prethickened) into a pre-made (go ahead, hate me) Trader Joe's crust, which I latticed on top, glazed with milk and sprinkled with sugar. Results: the filling fell, leaving a sorry empty dome, but the outer crust was perfect and the flavors incredible with many distinct layers. If it were a painting, it would be a Matisse? Those who ate some raved and were intent on mixing blueberry varieties on their next go. Caveats; juice ran a lot even after cooling, and the inner crust got a little puddingy. Next time I'll prebake. TJ's crust is awesome, and I've handmade various other types (so. much. work.). TJ's competes and is more supple and less, em, gamy than mainstream brands. Next time I'll try prethickening the filling, even though it seems like a crime. Give and take your imperfections seems to be the theme...

The choice of berry is glossed over but it probably makes a difference. Wild berries are a lot of work to pick unless you have small kids to help (feed them before they go out) but they are more flavourful, tart and less juicy and in my opinion make the best pies (but then I almost never eat pies made with the giant american blueberries). Fantastic, probably the best thing you can eat all summer, especially after a lobster.

I really appreciate the arrowroot suggestion, and intend to try it out. I've tried tapioca, but think it's the worst thing to ever happen to pies. So I've always relied on cornstarch.

As to crusts, a butter crust is delicious! But instead of lard or shortening, I've been using Coconut Oil... Coconut Oil makes the most delicious crust ever! But it is hard to work with ... you almost have to build the crust in your pie pan, but requires no freezing, tastes great, and gives a similar consistency as shortening. Google some crazy vegan website to find out more!

Has anyone tried using kuzu as a thickening agent? I've used it for thickening a stir fry but never tried it for baking.

Two and one-half cups flour for a lattice-crust pie? Two's more like it. Don't upstage the berries.

I make blueberry cobbler far more often than pie (just ate a bowl of cobbler this evening, in fact), but I always use flour as a thickener and my filling never tastes of flour. I do add either lime zest or lemon zest to the berries, so perhaps that adds enough dimension to the flavor to get past any raw flour taste -- some blueberries can taste a bit flat by themselves. I'm sure the arrowroot starch is more effective at firming everything up, but I don't like that thick, gelled texture. I want the berries a bit runny. I may tweak the purée and stovetop thickening, though, without the arrowroot. Maybe cook it down to concentrate it?

All blueberry pies are perfect.

Overthinking ! Made one yesterday, recipe from Betty Crocker. Sugar, flour, a little cinnamon, a squeeze of lemon..moderately long cook time, high temp....brilliant. No need to reinvent the pie.

I have always used fresh berries (I pick them myself that day,) minute tapioca as a thickener, a very open lattice crust (the one in the picture has too much top crust!) and a combination butter/crisco crust; not to brag, but my pies have always come out well. The open lattice top lets the berries cool before the "soggy" the bottom crust. The combo of butter and crisco gives the crust good taste (butter) with good structure, and yet malleability (crisco.) The tapioca has never made a gummy filling (the juicy fresh berries see to that) but give the filling enough "umph" that it doesn't run all over after it is cut.

Too complicated. It's actually quite easy to make a wonderful blueberry pie.

Great article...I've been making a fabulous blueberry pie from the NY Times for years and it is always a hit but it is difficult to get it to thicken properly. Great suggestion on the arrowroot. I will have to try that. I use corn starch but I always have to use more than the recipe calls for to get the filling to stand up. Don't be afraid of a lattice top, it is actually quite easy. I also second the butter crust.

Just as I knew it would be about the wonderful blueberry; a sacred ground fruit.

Arrowroot is sooo mild and smooth that it joins in holy matrimony with the true blueberry juices. Cook these together in sequence i.e. reduce raw berries then add turbinado sugar with a little light panella until ready to move arrowroot mixed with H2O into the melting pot. No additional spices are needed. Attend stirring until finished. In pastry you must go to butter or high quality lard, Lard is the best overall in the end. You'll see.

This a royally sublime pastry that just loves to be served with a generous dollop of sweet cream or homemade vanilla ice cream. It's really the living end of flavors on the tongue and in the palate.

It's such a mysterious flavor!!

The aromatic pungent deep flavor of the tart berries

The best blueberry pie in the world is a little more reliable: fresh berries piled into fresh flaky pastry lined with a thin layer of slightly sweetened cream cheese, heavily glazed with a thick topping of cooked, sweetened berries and whipped cream. The. Best. Food. In. The. World.

Can someone just bake one and bring it to me? I'll supply homemade ice cream for a topping.

Has anyone tried potato starch? I have some for other uses, but always wondered how it might behave/respond with cooked fruit deserts. Homemade blueberry deserts of nearly any type are always fantastic because they're fresh. Too runny, who cares? The season is short. Add vanilla ice cream or whipped cream & it's perfection. Enjoy.

Checkout some older cookbooks. I use the pie crust and the filling recipes from Betty Crocker's Cookbook published in 1971. Delicious. Perfection is highly overrated and scares off new bakers. Stay away from mixers. They tend to over mix. All the flavors get mashed together. What you want is to get different tastes in your mouth. A bit of crust, sugar, cinnamon, butter, fruit so that your taste buds dance. I think the Japanese call it Umami? Nothing beats handmade and homemade when it come to pie.

Of course, the most fun is to go to a farm to pick the blueberries yourself! My family and I regularly go to a Pick-Your-Own farm for apples and blueberries for a delightful day out and delicious pies afterwards!

Theere is a blueberry kuchen recipe from Women's Day in the early '60s that has a use-your-fingers pie-like crust and comes out perfectly every time.

Rubbish. The best blueberry pie is the simplest:
9" graham cracker crust. 3/4 cup sugar. 3 tablespoons cornstarch. pinch of salt. 1/4 cup water. 4 cups FRESH blueberries. Place 2 cups of bbs in the pie shell. Set aside. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly in a four-quart boiler and mix in water. Whisk thoroughly until creamy smooth and bring to a boil. Add 2 cups remaining blueberries and stir briskly over high heat until mixture thickens. Let sit for one minute and then ladle onto fresh bbs in pie shell and spread for an even top.

My father loved blueberry pie. I mean, aside from a really good sharp cheddar cheese and a nice bit of stilton with hovis bread, he could have lived on blueberry pie, he loved it that much. Making him blueberry pies was always a challenge as to texture - his favourite criticism was "too gloopy" - but he loved the taste of my filling (and, to brag a little, loved my crust). And then I read a mystery book. I am awful for not being able to remember the author's name (she's long since died, but wrote three or four books involving deaths and food in Maine and Arizona) but the first one of her books gave me the perfect blueberry pie recipe. Perfect. Unless you like a top crust. There isn't one on this version, but when you're serving it with homemade vanilla and cinnamon ice creams, a top crust seem superfluous. The trick - cook half the usual amount of blueberries in your favourite recipe with all the sugar & seasoning & thickener you normally use. I do the cooking in the mic because it seems to work both fastest and with no danger of burning (well, little danger if you're watching). When you've achieved the right thickness, stir in the remaining blueberries and pour into a BAKED pie shell. Let sit until set. Serve. One pie serves five people and my father.

Good to know that the experts find blueberries just as difficult. Sadly, the recipe link is broken [9 a.m.) and a search of the NYTIMES Cooking shows no blueberry pies from you.

What is the difference between arrowroot and cornstarch?

Back when I had tons of freezer space, I used to buy a flat of blueberries at the height of the season; make all-butter crusts in deep-dish pie pans; with wash and completely dry the blueberries, freeze loose on baking sheets; fill each pie shell with the berries; add a SMALL amount of tapioca and maybe a bit of sugar; then wrap tightly and freeze.

In the winter, I could pull one out, pop it in the oven, and in short order have a pie that tasted exactly like the height of summer.

I find instant pectin 5 TBS to 5 cups blueberries and 3/4 cup sugar to be the best ratio for a juicy pie that holds together as well. The juice is crystal clear with no taste other then the berry. Add lemon juice and butter.

I have taken to making a galette instead of a pie, they are SO forgiving! Less blueberries needed [3 cups for an 8" pastry round] and it bakes faster - 25 minutes. I used cornstarch to thicken and it works well. I make it on a cookie sheet lined with parchment and the exterior/bottom of crust gets a lovely golden crunch to it. The key is to LET IT COOL before cutting - I know it's tempting to jump the gun, but your patience will be well rewarded.

The best blueberry pie recipe I have tried came from a cookbook from Maine (of course!). It calls for pre-cooking and thickening slightly half the blueberries for the pie and and has no top crust. Perfection! Truly delightful pie!