kitchen 101: how to make pie crust

Next up, you want to pulse together the flour, sugar and salt in the basin of a food processor. Pulse just a few times to get it nice and mixed up. Don’t have a food processor? That’s cool, just whisk together the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Using a sharp knife, cut your frozen butter into small pieces. It takes a little bit of elbow grease to cut through solid-frozen butter, but keeping the butter cold is what makes the crust nice and flaky. If you prefer, you can cut unfrozen butter into chunks and then freeze those chunks. Whatever makes you happy. Just as long as your butter is crazy cold.
Add the cut-up frozen butter to the food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles the texture of small pebbles. Don’t worry about getting all the butter chopped up evenly. It’s more important for your butter to stay frozen than it is for the butter to be perfectly distributed. If you are doing this by hand, you’ll need to go at the butter/flour mixture with a pastry blender or two butter knives, cutting in the butter until it’s the size of small pebbles. Work quickly (and in a cool space if you can) you don’t want that butter to warm up.
Working a tablespoon at a time, add in the ice water and pulse the food processor until combined. After each addition, grab a handful of the mixture and squeeze it together. When it stays together without crumbling (it usually takes about four tablespoons for me) you are done. If you are doing this by hand, follow the same method, except whisk vigorously between each tablespoon of water.
Yay! Your pie crust dough is done. Woohoo! Now dump the crumbly meal onto a clean work surface and, using your hands, form into a solid lump, then into a disc. Work as quickly as possible because the heat in your hands will melt the butter (which, as we’ve established, is a no-no). The disc doesn’t have to be perfect.
Wrap up the disc in plastic wrap and stash in the fridge. It’ll need to rest in there for about an hour before you roll it out. If you’re in a rush, you can stick it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
After the crust has chilled out in the fridge, let it warm up a bit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes, then roll out on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/8″ and large enough around to cover your pie plate. Roll the crust around your rolling pin for easy transporting.
Unroll on top of your ungreased pie plate (don’t worry, there is enough butter in the pie crust to not stick). Gently push it in the plate to contour along the sides.
Leaving about 1/2″ all the way around, trim the extra crust, roll the 1/2″ under and then flute or decorate the edge however you prefer. Tada!

kitchen 101: how to make pie crust

Ingredients

Instructions