My Fried Pie Story

In my high school days, one of the best days of the week was Thursday.  Thursday was Lion's Club day.  Thursday was the day for Apricot Fried Pies at the Dairy Mart made specifically for the Lion's Clubbers, of which, we all know, I was not one.  But the Dairy Mart was kind enough to share them with us commoners.............for a price, that is.  As I recall you could buy one of these sweet/tart pies for 75 cents topped with ice cream.  I cannot tell you how delicious these were, the white rivers of melting ice cream flowing all around the bits of crispy flaky crust waiting for my spoon to expose the apricot lusciousness inside.  So whenever we could and whenever I had enough money, my dear friends and I would walk to the Dairy Mart for one of these little pies.

Last week it so happened that I had a 2 pound bag of dried apricots in my pantry so I decided that I would make fried pies.  Bear in mind that I have never ever made fried pies in my life.  How hard could it be?  No, I didn't use a recipe, but really how hard could it be, right?  I got my apricots out, put them in the pot, and covered with water...no sugar, but that was intentional.  These lovely orange babies cooked until tender and were good just like they were, but they needed just a tad of sweetness.  I grabbed a jar of the apricot preserves that I made just the week before and added it to the tender apricots.  The mixture was perfect...........ready for fried pies.

Then it gets strange.  I found a huge bottle of Canola Oil in my pantry.  There is no telling how long I had it.  It came from Sam's Club so you know it's a big jug and there was probably a good half gallon left in the bottle.  The date was still good, but I smelled it just in case, and sure enough, it was rancid.  But just how rancid was it?  Could I use it anyway?  I needed to taste it and there is only one way...........fry something in it.  I have never claimed to be smart on the up-take.  Well, rather than fry up a whole batch of these little pies and throwing them away, I tested one, just one.  That was enough!  The smell was unbelievable.  You could smell that oil in my bedroom closet with the door closed.  We dared to taste that little pie and sure enough, the taste was as bad as the smell.  Well shoot, I wasted a half gallon of oil....not to mention it took me two days to get the smell out of the house.

OK, it was time to get serious.  That first test pie was made with a store bought Pillsbury Pie Crust, but now if I am going to do this right, I need to make my own "from scratch" pie crust so I proceeded to make the crust recipe found on the Crisco sticks.  I was also beginning to feel guilty about eating something that was fried so I gave in to the GUILT and baked a tray of "non-fried" fried pies.  They were the same shape, but alas, they were horrible and nothing like a good old fried pie.  Good thing I only made 5.  We picked around on them for the rest of the day, but they left us longing for an actual fried pie.

The next morning I thought surely I could try this again, but this time I will actually fry the fried pies.  This time I actually looked up a recipe on the Internet, a reviewed recipe, I might add.  A dough recipe using an egg...........now I have never heard of using an egg in dough, but the reviews..................  I had a new bottle of Canola so I heated it to the specified temperature actually using an oil thermometer.  What could go wrong?  Nothing at this point................  The pies were looking good, but then they started to burn and burn fast.................even using the thermometer...............so I turned down the heat.  Four pies came out of the oil and onto the cooling rack.  Four pies............and not one fit to eat.  Three were doughy and the fourth was soggy with grease.  Yuck!   

My Dear Hubby:  Sorry guy.  You will have to continue your quest for the perfect fried pie, but make this note, you will never find one in our kitchen.  That was the last time I will attempt them regardless of your encouraging "practice makes perfect".  Not gonna happen.

I love you.  Thanks for letting me share "My Fried Pie Story".  By the way, there is a delicious apricot cobbler on my countertop waiting for ice cream and me!  Come over, I will share.