Deep Dish Apple Pie
Featuring a mix of tart and sweet apples, this Deep Dish Apple Pie is a new summertime favorite in our house!
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As American as apple pie. We’ve all heard the saying. You can’t get much more quintessential American than a homemade apple pie, right? Toss in some ice cream, baseball and hot dogs, and you’re all set. Of course, you’ll need some Bruce Springsteen playing in the background, too.
Here in upstate New York, I usually associate apples with the arrival of fall. We’re surrounded by apple orchards, and I go out almost weekly to pick up another big bag of apples. (Even one of our dogs likes apples…as in, I think apples are his favorite food. But only green apples.) But fall is still several months away, and we’ve got plenty of summer nights grilling on the back deck left before apple season arrives.
With the 4th of July right around the corner, I figured a good apple pie would be in order. In my random wanderings around the interweb, I stumbled across a new apple pie technique via Yankee Magazine. It called for cooking the apples first before putting them into the pie. The reason? Apples shrink a lot as they cook. By cooking the apples first, you can go from the standard 4 or 5 apples in a pie up to 10. Heck, I think I could have gotten 11 apples into this pie. Maybe even 12 if my dog wasn’t snacking on every other slice of green apple that I cut.
Another trick for making this Deep Dish Apple Pie…use a mixture of apple varieties. Figuring out what type of apple to use in an apple pie is confusing. I get it. There are dozens of apple varieties out there. I’ve always heard that you should bake with green apples. And this Deep Dish Apple Pie does use green apples. But it also uses some sweeter red apples, too. I went with 5 tart apples (Granny Smith) and 5 sweet apples (Jonagold or Braeburn are both good choices, but any sweet variety will work).
As we head into the middle of summer, what are your favorite summer traditions? Do you grill out a lot? Do you bake a lot of apple pies? For us, we enjoy the longer days by sitting on the back porch. As far as I’m concerned, the best way to end a week is by sitting out on the deck chatting with friends…and eating a slice of Deep Dish Apple Pie. Enjoy!
Deep Dish Apple Pie
Ingredients
- 2 batches of pie dough homemade or store-bought
For Apple Filling
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup brown sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- ¾ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ ground nutmeg
- 5 tart ex: Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced into ¼” slices
- 5 sweet ex: Jonagold or Braeburn apples, peeled and sliced into ¼” slices
For Crust
- 1 egg white beaten with 1 Tbsp of water
- 2 Tbsp sparkling sugar
Instructions
- Roll each batch of pie dough out into a 12” circle. (Note: You will have (2) 12” circles of dough.)
- Press one circle of dough into a 9” pie plate. Place pie plate and second circle of dough in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Using a Dutch oven or large skillet, add all Apple Filling ingredients (sugar, brown sugar, salt, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and apples); stir until well combined.
- Place over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, for 12-15 minutes, or until apples just turn fork tender.
- Transfer apples onto rimmed baking sheet and let cool for30 minutes at room temperature (or ~10 minutes in refrigerator).
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Transfer apples into a large colander and shake to drain as much liquid as possible. (Do not rinse!) Transfer apples into pie dish.
- Top apples with the second circle of dough. Pinch edges of top and bottom dough together. Trim edges to ~¾” overhang. Fold overhang on top of itself so that it is even with edge of pie dish. Using fingers, crimp edges or press with fork.
- Brush top of pie with egg white and then sprinkle sparkling sugar evenly on top. Cut (4) 2” slashes in top crust to allow steam to escape.
- Bake at 425°F on lowest rack of oven for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking for 42-45 more minutes, or until top of pie is golden brown. Let cool for at least 60 minutes before slicing.
You can’t go wrong with apple pie and yours looks so good!
Thanks so much, Caroline! I agree…apple pie is a classic! 🙂
Hi David! Apple pie never lasts long here! I make mine almost identical to yours with one exception…my best friend in Arkansas sends me Caramel Pecan Apple Butter so I lace my apple pies with that before putting the top crust on. I think you need a nice glass of wine to go with your pie as you relax on the deck! 🙂
You’ve mentioned this Caramel Pecan Apple Butter before…and it sounds amazing! I would love to drop spoonfuls of that one into this pie. Yum! And a slice of apple pie with a cold glass of wine sounds like my idea for a perfect summer evening. 🙂
Precooking is a great idea….My apple pies always have that hollow cavern from the apples shrinking. 🙂
Yeah, I know what you mean, Kathy…this was a new technique to me. And now it’s my go-to method. So many delicious apples crammed into this one pie! 🙂
This looks amazing. I have a friend’s birthday on the 4th of July and a couple of our friends are from the States… so we’re thinking of doing a themed birthday thing. It’s getting pretty cold here at the moment (well… by our standards), so this might be just the warm treat to make for it!!
That’s the best thing about apple pie, Liz! You can serve it warm in the Fall or Winter, or you could serve it room temperature (or even chilled) on a hot summer day. That 4th of July themed party sounds like a ton of fun…enjoy! 🙂 (And thanks for stopping by, too!)
This looks amazing, mate- Totally make apple pie with a twist the new hot dogs for 4th of July celebrations!
Save me a slice on your porch 😀
Heck yeah! What about apple pie AND hot dogs for the 4th? I’ll save you a seat, mate!
this looks delicious! My dad loves apple pie and he is here these days so I should make this for him! 🙂
Oh, you should totally make your Dad an apple pie Manali! I love this new technique of cooking the apples first, too…you can squeeze SO many apples into the apple pie. Yum! 🙂
Apple pie is our favorite too. This one looks so good and delicious 🙂
Thanks so much, Kushi! It’s hard to beat apple pie. So easy and classic. 🙂
Oh my, all those layers of sliced apples and that crunchy sugar on the crust! Dave, if we were neighbors I’d grill us all a rib eye for a slice after. 🙂
Oh, now you’re talking, Kevin! Grilled ribeye + apple pie? Sounds like a perfect summer meal right there. Want to move out east? 🙂
Oh heavens! I’m not sure how I missed this – but WoWy! This is one heck of a deep apple pie! We don’t make pie often enough, the last time we made apple pie was for Christmas and I did pre-cook the apples as I was testing out a gluten free crust and had no clue how it would do so figured the less moisture in there the better – it never occurred to me that I was able to squeeze in more apples that way!
I have 2 dogs that LOVE apples too – apples and broccoli – go figure!
So how did the gluten-free pie crust turn out? I bet you could do a fun crumble with oats! Or I bet Bob’s 1-to-1 might work. Either way, I was loving the fact that I was able to shove so many apples into this pie. I’ve always used raw apples in my pies, so you can imagine the look on my face when I got at least 2x the number of apples into this one.
And raw broccoli, eh? I don’t think Max has tried that one…yet. Totally picking some up at the store this week now! 🙂
I did use Bob’s 1-to-1 flour and it tasted pretty awesome (I used Lindsey’s recipe from American Heritage Cooking) – mine was a little less flaky than her pie crust was, but gosh it looked scary! I took it out of the oven and Lil Shashi and my sis gave me a look (the opposite of the one you must have had) but then they topped their slices with ice cream and forgot about how it looked 🙂
Yes – raw broccoli! I buy these huge bags from Costco and those silly dogs end up eating half of it.
Ice cream makes everything better! Except broccoli. I wouldn’t recommend that combo. 🙂 Thanks, Shashi!!
Being a Chicagoan, when I hear “deep dish,” I – like a reflex – say “leave it to the tourists.” But not when the words that follow are apple pie! Nice pre-baking tip, David. It also helps take the guesswork out of the pie’s readiness.
Hah! So Chicagoans don’t eat that much deep dish pizza? You coulda fooled me! I’ve been to Chicago once a few years back, and we did go out for pizza. It was good, but I don’t have any desire to do it again. In the famous words of Abe Lincoln (or was it Calloway)…I want apple pie. Lots and lots of apple pie.