- Hey bakers, John Kanell here from Preppy Kitchen here.
Today we're making a perfectly sweet,
super zingy lemon meringue pie with a homemade
butter pastry crust that you are just gonna die for.
It comes together in a snap
and let's get started.
I'm zesting two lemons into a large bowl.
Use nice, fresh lemons, organic if you can find them.
Otherwise give them a really good wash.
The zest has so much flavor and aroma
that really is a great addition to any lemon dish.
One.
And two.
All right, roll those lemons out a bit,
oh, slippery.
Roll (chuckles) them out, help kinda break them apart
and that'll release their juices more easily.
Now we can give them a good cut.
And strain your juice.
We wanna have have 3/4 of a cup
of fresh lemon juice.
Fresh, people, not that pre-made stuff, fresh.
These are actually from my mom's tree.
She brought over a care package.
On her last visit.
This will be an extra special dessert.
I just juiced five smaller lemons,
let's see how much I have.
I want 3/4 of a cup of lemon juice
and the zest is already in there.
It's exactly 3/4 of a cup, how nice.
Okay, next step.
Into a good-sized heavy saucepan,
I'm adding in 1 1/3 cups of sugar, that's 266 grams.
There we go.
Didn't fall.
3/4 of a cup of my lemon juice and zest.
1 1/4 cups of water.
A generous 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt
and I'm gonna zero this out and tell you exactly
how much corn starch I'm adding in grams so,
one,
two,
three,
four tablespoons or 1/4 cup of corn starch, that's 50 grams.
This is our thickening agent, it's important
for getting a pie that you can actually cut into.
If you add too much, little gelatinous,
you add too little, totally gloopy.
You choose.
We're gonna whisk this up now.
That corn starch will form clumps
so really just try and break them up first.
Okay, that's great.
I'm gonna set this aside for just a minute
while we separate our eggs.
Yesterday, I had the worst luck
and broke four egg yolks in a row.
And I need to have my egg whites for the meringue topping.
So I'll be cracking each egg individually into a test bowl
like I should be doing all the time.
The yolk is going one,
dump that out and repeat the process.
This is the best way to do things.
I really rarely do this but
yesterday was so crazy.
I learned my lesson.
Second yolk broke.
What the heck?
(beep)
Not going so great.
This one's better.
In you go.
So I have four egg yolks and two egg whites.
All right.
I'm reserving these three egg whites for later.
I need some more of those so, it didn't work out as planned.
Whisk your yolks up.
We're gonna set them aside.
Now for our lemon mixture and some heat.
Place lemon mixture on medium-high heat
and just keep stirring it.
You're gonna watch it, keep it moving
and you'll notice when it's thickening up.
It'll take a few minutes but it's worth the wait.
Okay, so right now, you can see that it's starting to
thicken up on the bottom.
It happens really quickly.
So just stir, stir, stir.
And stir a bit harder too.
Like, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir
and then you can see,
oh what's going on here?
It looks totally different now, right?
Just means that we're now ready to turn the heat off.
I'm gonna place a wet towel underneath my yolks,
the viewer hint I got and just pour in
maybe like 1/3 or so of this while you whisk hard.
This is tempering the egg yolks.
Okay and now, we can add the hot egg yolk mixture
into our lemon mixture.
Get it all in there.
So turn it back onto medium heat now.
And we're gonna whisk it for two minutes.
This is a great consistency.
It will really setup nicely.
But if you wanted to be runnier,
just reduce the corn starch by a tablespoon and 1/2
or 20 grams or so.
So now I'm gonna add in four tablespoons
of unsalted butter and we're gonna stir that in.
It's gonna change the consistency completely,
make it so silky and just amazing.
Of course butter makes everything better.
See how silky that is now compared to before?
Perfect.
Let it cool down for just a minute
and then we can pore it into our pie shell.
You're gonna be pouring that delicious filling
into the pie crust of your choice,
I suggest a beautiful homemade butter crust.
You can click up here for my perfect pie crust recipe.
It has all my tips and tricks
on how to get it right every single time
but lemme take you through it real quick.
Add 2 1/2 cups or 300 grams of all purpose flour into
a food processor along with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt,
1/4 cup of sugar and give it a nice whiz.
Whiz, whiz, whiz, whiz, whiz.
Then add in one full cup or 226 grams of cold cubed butter.
Pulsing the food processor a couple of times
until you have like a small grainy mixture.
Grains the size of lentils.
Drizzle in a 1/4 cup of ice water,
mixed with some vodka.
Your choice of how much.
Just kidding.
Add a tablespoon of vodka to that ice water (chuckles)
Drizzle that in while you pulse the food processor.
Dumb it out onto a surface of your choice.
Mush it up together.
Wrap it in plastic.
And then, once it's chilled, you're gonna roll it out,
plop that into your pie tin, whatever you're using.
Get the edges all nice and pretty..
Add some parchment paper, some tinfoil to support
the edges, fill it with pie weight
or beans, whatever you want.
Bake at 425 for about 15 minutes.
Remove it from the oven.
Remove all of that tinfoil, the beans, the paper.
Give it an egg wash, tent the outside,
bake it again for another 15 minutes at 425
and then reduce the temperature to 375
and bake until it is golden brown.
Pie filling cooled down just a little bit.
So let's add that in there.
This smells so good.
It smells so good (chuckles)
Now, just smooth it out a bit and this is a very
deep dish pie crust.
I have a swap-out where it's kinda normal size
and it fills it all the way to the top.
But this gives you some room for the meringue too so
it's not all gonna be hanging out.
Okay, that looks fine considering it's
gonna be completely covered.
This guy should go into the fridge
and honestly, if I were you, I would do this
the night before so I would've baked it up the
night before and then the day of,
top it with the meringue, toast it
and serve it.
You could also top it with the meringue right now.
It will be okay
but it's safer to do it this way
because the meringue might weep a little bit.
And just become kinda slippery and slidy
when you cut the pieces
and you want them to be nice and stable,
that's the whole point of using that corn starch
and doing all these steps.
Cover this in plastic and pop it into the fridge
for at least three to four hours.
At least four to five hours.
Or over night (chuckles)
I'm gonna come back with one I made yesterday.
Okay, so yesterday I made this pie.
You can see, it's kind of the more typical
pie tin sized container
and it fills it all the way right to the top.
This is nice and good to go.
I'm gonna make some quick Italian meringue to top this.
You can make a French meringue if you prefer
but Italian meringue is gonna give you such
a silky wonderful consistency, you're gonna love it.
For the Italian meringue, I'm adding in
one cup or 200 grams of sugar.
1/3 of a cup of water.
Set that aside for a minute.
And I'm gonna use 160 grams or like four,
kind of extra large egg whites.
All right, I'm adding my egg whites into a very
very clean bowl.
You can wipe that down with vinegar if you want.
Pinch of salt.
1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar.
It's a little acid to help stabilize the egg whites.
And we're gonna get this going at the same time
and we're gonna place this sugar on a medium high heat.
This needs to come to 240 before we can pour it in
so hopefully, the egg white will reach the soft
peak stage right when your sugar is 240.
If not, you know, adjust things.
Start low and then move high.
You wanna break the egg whites up slowly.
(cheerful music)
Once your egg white starts frothing up,
we're gonna add in 1/3 of a cup of sugar
really slowly while we're mixing.
Drizzle that sugar in.
Don't rush.
Okay, now we can check on our sugar temperature
So I just checked this out, that hit 240 .
This is the soft peak stage.
You can see that it formed softer peaks
that kinda have a little bit of a drib to them.
Very pretty.
Aaah.
So all we have to do is add in our sugar
very hot, very carefully,
while this mixes up.
(cheerful music)
Let's give that meringue a little bit of flavor
by adding in a splash of vanilla.
(cheerful music)
This needs to mix up for a little bit.
Kinda warm so we want this to be close to room temperature
when we plop it onto that nice cooled lemon curd.
It'll be so amazing
Use a spatula to transfer a giant mound of that meringue
onto your cooled pie.
Go ahead massage it a bit.
Create some little spikes, little swoops here and there.
Some nice visual interest.
Now it's time to torch it.
This gives a beautiful definition
and a wonderful depth of flavor to that meringue.
I love it so much.
If you don't have a kitchen torch,
you need to treat yourself and buy one right now.
If you don't like meringue, by the way,
you could totally just top this with whipped cream,
leave it plain, little dusting of powdered sugar,
even some strawberry slices.
All of those would be delicious.
I, however, love meringue, so I'm excited to take a bite.
Mmm-hmm, yum.
So much lemon flavor but not too much, just right.
Hmmm and that meringue, it's really light
and balances everything out
and for me, the best finishing touch
is the crunch of that pastry.
It is so crispy, crunchy perfect.
If you enjoyed this recipe,
check out my lemon cake,
it is full of zing,
so creamy and it is a great lemon lover's party treat.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you like my videos, hit that like button
and subscribe and I'll see you soon.