Over the weekend I put up apples. I dried them in my dehydrator. I used the peels and cores to make juice for jelly making in the coming weeks.
We’ve had a few cool mornings over the last several days. Between the fall like weather and the apples I got a taste for fried pies.
Here’s the recipe I use.
Fried Pies
- 4 cups self-rising flour (additional for rolling out)
- 3/4 cup shortening
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1-2 cups ice water
- oil for for frying
Mix up the dough by cutting the shortening and butter into the flour. A good tip for the butter is to grate it on your box grater before adding. I use one of the smaller sides of the grater.
Once flour is crumbly start adding water until a dough is formed.
Roll dough out and cut into circles. I use the top to one of my pyrex bowls for a template.
Fill dough with your choice of filling, fold, dampen edges with water, and crimp edges with a fork.
Place filled pies in hot oil (350 degrees) and cook till brown on both sides. Additional oil may need to be added if cooking the whole recipe.
Remove from oil and drain. A mixture of sugar and cinnamon adds a finishing touch to the fried pies. Sprinkle it on as soon as you remove the pies from the hot oil.
For fillings I sometimes use canned preserves or apple butter. Over the weekend I cooked some of the apples I was working up with some sugar and used that. I also had some peaches I dried last year. I reconstituted them with water, added a little sugar and cooked till thick. Hard to say if the apple or the peach pies were better.
Here’s a video I made of the process a couple of years ago.
Last night’s video: Digging Taters, Sugary Cereals, & Matt Can Finally See His Bow!
Tipper
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MY MOTHER USED TO MAKE APPLE FRIED PIES JUST LIKE THE ONE’S PICTURED.
Would love the recipe. I don’t think I have ever eaten anything from your country. It sounds good. If you have time, dramasbiscuits@gmail.com
Thank you and God bless
Hello Tipper,
I feel so lucky to have found your page. You & your family are incredible representations of a real Americans from Americas Heartland. I tried your pinto beans and cornbread recipes. The cornbread ca me out great. But I used a smoked turkey drumstick instead of ham for the beans, it came out salty & the drumstick was too much meat for the whole bag of beans I cooked. In high school I had a friend from Harlan, Kentucky, she moved to Baltimore near me, and we became schoolmates in high school. One day she invited me over for a typical country dinner of pinto beans, cornbread, fried potatoes & it was delicious. Also, it was delightful to meet the rest of her family who were such real down to earth kindhearted people. I tried to recapture the flavors of the meal, I got close and will try again.
Oh my word Tipper them fried pies look scrumptious!! From years of watching how you cook, I know they taste just as amazing as they look!!
I’ve bought fried pies from different booths during the festival fall season but was always greatly disappointed in the taste.
My late mother in-law made them and they were so good. I’m guessing the lard and iron skillet, plus how the apples were cooked, are the secrets too good tasty fried apple pies.
They really look so good. Thanks for sharing!
They look so delicious! I could taste one now.
Daddy made fried doughnuts and Mommy made fried pies! Those are some sweet memories!!
Both pies sound delicious!
Tipper, please tell us about making juice and jelly from apple peelings.
I dry apples in the air fryer/convection oven every few days. I’d been tossing the peeling in the trash. Maybe I should making juice and jelly.
Robert-You can see one method here: https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/apple-juice-and-jelly-from-peelings/ But this year I put the peelings and cores into my steam juicer and let it do all the work. Since you don’t have to add water the juice is much more concentrated 🙂
Oh, Tipper, my neighbor has given me a lot of cling-free peaches in the past couple weeks and I’ve been using my dehydrator and drying them as fast as I can so I had a big smile on my face this morning when I saw your picture of fried pies!! I think I probably have said before my Mother was the best cook ever and her fried pies were fantastic. I know growing up they had apple trees and dried them but they also had I think what they called Indian Peach tree in NEMS. My Mother’s Mother may have brought that tree from her old home place in east TN. Of course, they fried their pies in the old iron skillet.
I now live in SC PA and we have lots of peach orchards and apple orchards. You can always find dried apples in the Amish stores but you just don’t find dried peaches. To me, fried peach pies are the best. I guess years back spending time in MS and TN, I was privileged to feast on those fried peach pies and you just don’t forget the great tasting food of your growing-up years:) The wonderful thing about drying apples or peaches is that you can reconstitute some in the winter and taste that fantastic goodness of years gone by.
Hickory switches, lol, I sure remember Mother telling me her Mother, who raised 11 children, would send them out to cut some hickory switches if they had got in the creek after they had been told not to, and those girls said it sure didn’t feel good on their bare legs:)
I remember my Mother making me chocolate pies when I was very young (i am now 89). My Mother and her mother cooked the foods you do and my grandmother used most of the word you show in your vocabulary column. I was not raised in Appalachia and my grandmother was raised in Dyer County, Tennessee so I believe that her mother, my great-grandmother must have come from Appalachia. Sadly I haven’t found her as I do my genealogy.
I am writing from Ukraine. Here they make a fried pie, but it is stuffed with mashed potatoes or fried cabbage with fried onions and garlic. I have eaten something like this in Greece, but it is stuffed with spinach and feta cheese.
Would love the recipe. I don’t think I have ever eaten anything from your country. It sounds good. If you have time, dramasbiscuits@gmail.com
Thank you and God bless
Yum! They look delicious!
Oh, now I am so hungry for apple pie after seeing the picture you posted this morning! The squirrels took every last one of my apples this year before they were ready for picking. A kind neighbor gave me a bag full from which I made one pie, and froze enough for another. I have never made fried pies, but I have eaten them when we were in Amish country in Ohio. Delicious! Thank you for another awesome recipe to add to my collection of things to try. Have a super day!
Mom’s Black Sheepnose apple tree I transplanted had a few apples this year, but the critters got them before I could. My other two apple trees did not do well this year. It looks like I will be buying apples from the orchard several counties south of here. The picture triggered a serious craving for fried apple pies.
My Granny made wonderful fried pies. That is my favorite dessert of hers. She might have used lard so you know they were good. ☺️
Nothing better than a good fried pie. And there is no bad time for one but they are an especially good fit for fall. I would not eat one (or two) unless I was alone or with somebody. As to a favorite – gee, that’s hard to say, probably apple. Baked ones are still very good, just not quite as good as fried. Old Dutch Maid up near Greeneville, TN bakes 20 kinds. But their distribution reaches only to the Knoxville area.
Randy, that idea of sassafrass sticks in with the dried apples is very interesting. Was it for flavoring, to repel bugs or both? Our local farm store sells dried apples that have been sprinkled with cinnamon. I’m guessing that was done before drying started.
Ron-if you’re ever in Knoxville stop by Pratts market..and yes they are delicious.
Ron, they thought it would keep bugs out of their apples. Did it work? I don’t know, I only know they would do it each year.
Along with apple, peach, and cherry fried pies, sweet potato fried pies are also popular in my area. At one time Bojangles had sweet potato pies on their menu, they probably still do, I hardly ever eat out at any type of restaurant anymore.
Mama used to fry up about 100 pies for Christmas. She always set aside 30 or so for us to bring back home, telling my husband that just because she made them for him, he still had to share. Let me tell you the kids and I held him to it. She let me help her make them one year but even though she actually did the filling, mine still didn’t taste the same. My whole family still talks about Aunt Meda’s pies at Christmas dinner and it’s been over 30 years since we tasted one. Ah, Tipper, another wonderful memory for this Monday morning. Thanks.
My KY mother made fried pies while I was growing up. She never used a recipe for any of her cooking and these pies were so tasty. I don’t remember eating anything but apple and peach pies, but she may have made blackberry ones too. The crust was so flaky, and we liked to put a powdered sugar glaze or just powdered sugar on ours. She used her trusty old iron skillet to fry them in and never baked them. We used lard when we could get it, and I like it best for cooking but now-a-days use Crisco butter shortening for pie dough. Mom was 95 as of August 10 and still cooks some although not as much as she used to. I love her stack cake too. She used her home-made apple butter for that. I have made fried apple pies, and they are delicious. My children and grandchildren love them, and I make small pies for the little ones. Good memories. I enjoyed watching your video last evening of you and Matt. It has been in the forties the last few mornings here in southern Virginia. Fall is in the air.
My girls and I made your hand pies out of your books over the summer and they were delicious and so simple. We had strawberry jam and blueberries at the time so that’s what we made. Hard to choose between those, too!
Tipper, I find myself always asking the same question concerning you-is there nothing you cannot make or do? I swear I’ve never seen a woman with more coals in the fire and able to do it all so well!!!! I think your pies look delicious and here’s a hoist of my coffee to say cheers on those pies and cheers to you too!!! I got my ring from Katie and it’s more beautiful than I ever dreamed! For the price I paid, I feel like I got my moneys worth and then some!!! I just LOVE AND ADORE THE WHOLE CROWD OF YA!!!! Much love and God’s blessings in all your endeavors and on this day!!! It’s been in high 40’s in the morning in WV and the trees are losing leaves too! Brrrr y’all get ready I’m afraid…
Oh yes, it would be difficult to choose between apple or peach. Love either of them in a pie, fried or otherwise.
My mother made the best fried pies. My little sister preferred the ones using reconstituted dried apples. I like the peach+apricot combination. My father always prepared the filling. I loved when the fried pies had some small black “burnt spots” from slight overcooking in my Mama’s cast iron skillet.
Happy Monday! God bless!!
I picked two Cherokee Purple Tomatoes from the garden yesterday. They were just ripening. I hope they ripen more and quicker inside. I’ve been waiting all summer and they are SO slow growing. I still have about 20 green ones out there, so I hope they will turn before we get cold. I have a bunch of small watermelons and cantaloupe too. Fall is coming on fast.
I didn’t grow up with fried pies, but did grow up with pasties and fried bread. I first learned about fired pies from a local Amish store, which at that time was in Ohio. I quickly found recipes as I had fallen in love with their cherry fried pies. They are so easy to make and though cherry remains my favorite, any fruit is truly wonderful, and then there are the glorious half-circle meat pasties. Nothing better!
Pies look delicious! Good memories!
Have a great week!
I bought some fried apple pies this Saturday from someone selling them out front of Tractor Supply. They looked good but the taste was a big disappointment. I remember Mother and Grandmother drying apples in the hot summertime on a piece of tin from a tree they called a “horse apple” tree. Cooking and making jelly were the only things these apples were used for. Their fried apple pies would be in a half moon shape and fried in a cast iron skillet in lard made from a hog we had grown and butchered. Over the years I have ate fried pies from various places but none that tasted as good as theirs did. A side note they would each filled up a a white cloth “pillow case” like bag each year with their dried apples and have me go get finger (hickory switch) size limbs from a sassafras tree and and then break these limbs into small length sticks and put them in the bags along with the apples. I had a lot of experience with hickory switches and knew exactly what size to get!
Ah, yes! I, too, remember those hickory switches on bare legs. I got switched for practicing bad words I had learned from older kids. I didn’t even know what some of those terms meant, but Mama did.
Shoot Gene, if I didn’t get at least one whupping a day from Mama when I was home all day, I would tell Daddy when he came home from work to check on Mama, she must be sick, I haven’t got a whupping today. I deserved most of them. I didn’t know what those words meant either, I did know if Mama heard me say them it meant another whupping. I don’t think anyone has had a better Mother or Daddy than I had so don’t get the idea I had a mean Mother. My sister was the cause of a lot of them, she could make me so mad!