When you think of a pie, you might picture a fragrant apple pie or a rich chocolate cream pie before you think of a chicken pot pie, but savory pies are just as delicious as their sweeter counterparts. Savory pies offer an almost endless number of options for fillings, including meat, cheese and vegetables, and can be adapted to suit any occasion, from appetizers to main courses. Savory Pies is a cookbook that focuses on these savory, not sweet, pie applications and just might help to add a little variety to your usual pie-making routines.
The book opens with a short introduction to the world of savory pies before getting into the important part: the recipes. There are five different crust recipes used in these recipes, each very good but offering a completely different texture of crust for different applications. There is a traditional pie crust, a cream cheese crust, a flatbread dough, an extra-rich short dough and a gluten free pie pastry. These crusts could also be adapted to work with sweet pie fillings, too. After the crusts, the rest of the recipes are divided into four chapters: appetizers, meat and seafood pies, vegetable pies and hand pies. Most of the recipes are paired with pictures that show off the finished product, but even those that don’t have illustrations will sound tempting as you read through the ingredient lists.
Savory pies typically don’t get that much time in the spotlight and this book really lets them shine. The preparations can be a little more complicated than for dessert pies – many need more prep of the ingredients, since different meats and vegetables need to be handled in different ways – and the book makes every recipe seem very clear and very approachable. There is a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar flavors, so you’ll find everything from Classic Chicken Pot Pie to the more unusual but no less delicious Duk Confit Taquito Pies, which means that this book delivers a lot of variety to tempt anyone into making savory pies a regular dish in their kitchen.
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