OK, first of all, a key lime pie is NOT made with “regular” (Persian) limes. It is made with key limes, aka Mexican limes. They are smaller than Persian limes, about the size of a ping pong ball. They’re also not a deep green, but more of a yellow-green, and the juice is yellowish. They are considerably tarter than Persian limes, and have a distinctive flavor. They’re also kind of a pain to juice if they’re not fresh-picked, so personally I always buy bottled up here in Seattle. (I’m from Florida, where part of the year you can get good ones from groves or even off your own backyard tree.) Nellie and Joe’s Key West Lime Juice is the only brand I know and trust, and if your grocery store doesn’t have it, Amazon does.
A key lime pie is a custard pie made from key lime juice, egg yolks, and typically sweetened condensed milk, in a graham cracker crust (none of your bullshit butter cookie crusts, save that for some other, appropriate, kind of pie). Traditionally, you *can* put meringue on top, but only to use up the egg whites you separate from the yolks. It’s not fucking lemon meringue pie, there should not be a huge mound. Personally I don’t like wet French meringues (made with granulated sugar, as opposed to Italian meringues, which are made with syrup), I think they feel like sweetened snot in my mouth. You can also add a small amount of sweetened whipped cream when you plate it, but only a dollop.
A key lime pie should never, EVER be green. If it is, the baker doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing, and you should skip it. Even a custard pie made with Persian limes shouldn’t be green, ffs.
A key lime pie SHOULD be both very sweet and very tart, as well and very smooth and creamy. My personal standard for the flavor is that when you take a bite, the first thing you taste should be the creamy and the sweet, and then the tart should hit you, but your mouth shouldn’t pucker until you take a sip of water and wash the sugar away.
A key lime pie filling should not contain flour, starch, gelatin, or other stabilizers. It should be as simple as possible. Key lime pie, historically, is poor people food from the Florida Keys, using the basic ingredients they had lying around: limes from the backyard, eggs from the chickens (they still run around loose on Key West), a can of sweetened condensed milk, some graham crackers, sugar and butter for the crust. You’d stir it up, pour it into the pie shell, pop it in the over with dinner, pull it out and stick it in the icebox (with literal ice) to cool, eat it the next night. (Unless you used a no-bake version, where the key lime juice itself denatured and “chemically cooked” the egg yolks. But it’s too easy to get salmonella that way these days, in the US.) They’re meant to be simple, dammit.
Key lime pie was the kind of thing they made in shotgun shacks. (Which frequently look a little different in the Keys than they do in those pics. The hallways often have rooms built off both sides of the hallway, and the roof’s peak sometimes runs perpendicular to the hallway, and then additional sections might get added to the back as the family grew, leading to rooflines like ^^^^.) Just a bit of history.
So then. Key Lime Pie Recipe Time! This is the recipe my family has always used, it’s the recipe I used in my restaurant, it always gets rave reviews, and it is thoroughly authentic. Because I hate meringue, it does not include meringue.
one wooden spoon, stirring spatula, or spoonula
one small bowl for separating eggs into
one graham cracker pie crust, recipe to follow, or use a store-bought one, I don’t care
Ingredients:
1 - 12oz can sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks
½ cup key lime juice
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Mix those things together until smooth. Don’t beat them hard, you’ll incorporate air into the mix, that will mess up your texture and give you bubbles. When it is completely smooth, your oven should be hot, stick your filling in the fridge for a little while. Pre-bake your crust for 15 minutes, trust me, it is so much better if you do this. Do this even if it’s a store bought crust. If you don’t, your crust can get soggy. Pull it out, let it cool 10 minutes. Pour in the filling, bake 15 minutes. Pull it out. Let it cool for 30 minutes of a countertop, then stick it in the fridge for at least four hours, preferably overnight. Share and enjoy. (Or eat it all yourself.)
Graham cracker crust recipe:
You will need:
Hardware:
one mixing bowl
one glass bowl to melt butter in
one gallon ziplock OR a food processor
a wooden spoon
Ingredients:
1/3 of a box of graham crackers
1 stick butter
1/2c sugar
one 9″ pie plate
one heavy glass with a smooth flat bottom
Dump the graham crackers into the gallon ziplock or work bowl of your food processor. If using a bag, crush them up real good, until you have a lot of fine meal and some small pieces. If you’re using the food processor, break them up roughly, then pulse until you get the same thing.
Put them in the mixing bowl. Add the sugar, and stir to combine. Melt your butter. Mix that in. It should reach the consistency of wet sand, like you’re making a sandcastle. If you pick some up in your hand and squeeze it in your fist, it should hold its shape until you poke it.
Press this firmly into the bottom and up the sides of your pie plate. Then use the bottom of your glass to press it in even more firmly. Really compact it. Then bake it as above.
Great all-purpose graham cracker crust recipe, good for cheesecake too.
If you lose track of this recipe, look on the bottle of Nellie and Joe’s, that’s where we got it!
If you want to get really ridiculous and over the top, make a triple batch of filling and put it in the same crust. That’s what we did at the restaurant. But you might want to find someone to share the slice with!
There. I told you, don’t get me started. It’s a whole fucking thing with me. In the restaurant, if somebody asked in the key lime pie was authentic, the servers would go, “Oh, the owner’s from Florida, she has a thing about key lime pie. I can go get her if you like, she’s got a whole rant. It’s really funny.” And they would go get me out of the office and I would do a whole little standup bit about key lime pie. Much shorter than this was. I just wrote like 1200 words on this. I could write more. I won’t. I’m done.Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk?
