How to thicken your blueberry pie

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Boy, I bet that title got your attention, didn’t it?

 

 

Anyway.

 

 

You know I’ve been baking blueberry pies lately. Partner and all his family members love them, and I enjoy making them.  I have mostly perfected the process.

 

 

Except that I have always struggled with the juiciness issue.

 

 

Berries are naturally very juicy.  In extreme cases (as when I use frozen berries), this results in a crust filled with sweet blue soup. More often, it’s just an issue of messiness. Also, it’s hard to sop up all that good blueberry flavor when it’s running around liquefied in your pie plate.

 

 

So we use a thickening agent. And, mama, I have tried them all. Cornstarch is moderately effective. Flour has seemingly no effect at all (though my friend Cathleen swears by it). Tapioca creates a nightmarish blue/white solid mass inside your pie that looks like Styrofoam; it tastes okay, but it looks horrible.

 

 

(Yes, I know this is not the most pressing problem in the world, and not in the league of – say – world hunger, or a cure for cancer. But I set myself small problems to solve, and I generally achieve my goals.)

 

 

I was browsing the King Arthur catalog a few weeks ago when I noticed a product called “Instant Clearjel,” which promised to make runny / juicy pies a thing of the past.

 

 

For $4.95 plus shipping, it was worth the gamble.

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, hats off to this product. It is the greatest invention of our time.

 

 

The package said to add anywhere from two to five tablespoons, with berry pies getting more. I decided to be cautious in my first attempt, and added two.

 

 

The result was spectacular. The pie, when I cut into it, was glorious: a few berries crumbled away, but the filling held its shape. The individual berries glistened like dewdrops in the morning sunlight.  It made me feel like Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray all in one. Partner pronounced it one of my best pies ever.

 

 

I have no idea what’s in this stuff; the package says only “modified food starch.” Modified how? Shot out of a cannon? Exposed to gamma rays? Combined with something that came out of a meteor?

 

 

I don’t care.

 

 

All you pie bakers out there: save your nickels and dimes and buy some of this stuff.

 

 

It’s wonderful.

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The first blueberry pie of 2012

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I am an American, and I like apple pie. And I can make a damned good apple pie, too.

 

 

Somehow, however, I ended up with Partner, and he (and all of the members of his family) prefer blueberry pie.

 

 

I have adapted to this. I have made blueberry pies for years now. I have it down to a science.

 

 

Well, it’s June, and Stop & Shop just put blueberries on sale (two for one!), so it was time to bake my first pie of the season.

 

 

The big problem with blueberry pies is juiciness: if you’re not careful, you get a pieplate full of blueberry soup. I’ve tried all kinds of thickeners: regular flour (no effect at all), tapioca (which creates a creepy gelatinous Blueberry Tapioca Pudding filling), and cornstarch (which is best of all).

 

 

(I’ve ordered something from King Arthur called ClearJel which promises to solve all these problems. We’ll see.)

 

 

The other problems are sweetness and flavor. Blueberries really aren’t very flavorful, and need some help: sugar, spices (I take my lead from the King Arthur cookbook and add a little cinnamon and nutmeg to my blueberries). Too sweet? Not sweet enough? Hard to tell. If the berries look nice and mature and ripe, I trust them a little more, and add less sugar. If they’re small and nondescript – or if (horrors!) I’m using frozen berries – I add a lot more sugar.

 

 

So, on Sunday night, I baked the first official blueberry pie of 2012. The berries were nice and big and fat, so I wasn't too worried about flavor; I added less cornstarch, and less sugar.

 

 

The final result was (I will say) a success. It was sweet without being overpowering, and the spices assisted, but didn’t intrude. (The topic of piecrust deserves a blog of its own someday. But this was a very nice piecrust, savory and soft and agreeable.) The berries stayed whole, but popped pleasantly when you bit into them.

 

 

All in all, a good attempt.

 

 

(But I would rather have had an apple pie.)

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