Did You Know Vodka Makes the Perfect Pie Crust?
Do you completely fail every time you try to make pie crust? Is the crust tough? Does it taste like flour paste? If you're in charge of making pies for Christmas, and you want to make everything homemade, there is only one recipe you'll ever need for pie crust and the secret ingredient is Vodka!
Cooks Illustrated is one of my favorite magazines. All of the recipes in the magazine have been tested by America's Test Kitchen. America's Test Kitchen is a real kitchen just outside of Boston where three dozen full-time cooks develop the best recipes for all your favorite foods. They've tested recipes as much as 70 times to arrive at the best, most foolproof recipe.
One of my biggest fails is pie crust and they've solved my problem.
Here's why they say using Vodka in your pie crust works:
Since water bonds with flour to form gluten, too much of it makes a crust tough. But rolling out dry dough is difficult. For a pie dough recipe that baked up tender and flaky and rolled out easily every time, we found a magic ingredient: vodka. Using vodka, which is just 60 percent water, gave us an easy-to-roll crust recipe with less gluten and no alcohol flavor, since the alcohol vaporizes in the oven.
To see step-by-step instructions on how to make a pie crust using vodka, click here.
Since you only need about 1/4 cup of Vodka, you'll have plenty left over to make a nice cocktail to have with your pie.