Greetings from Brevard, North Carolina! Your humble correspondent will be filing many dispatches from this little corner of Western North Carolina in the future since Stephen and I have decided to cope with our empty nest by acquiring a second (also empty) nest in the mountains to retreat to. We’d like to retire here some day many years from now, and it seemed like a good idea to try out the area first for a while before making that leap. There is a lot of hiking, biking, fishing, craft beer, and local cider in the area, so don’t worry about us too much, and Jackson has already made lots of friends at the neighborhood dog park and is living his best life. Don’t worry. We will still be spending most of our time in Georgia.
This is the time of year we always talk about apples. Two years ago we made apple butter. I pulled out the slow cooker recipe last week and made a batch of apple butter with Mutsu, Jonagold, and Gala apples I got at the orchard in the picture above. Last year we took our newly-learned piecrust making skills and made a fancy apple pie with a lattice crust. This year I want to talk about a different kind of apple pie that my Granny Cantrell was particularly good a making, and that is the fried apple pie. It was one of my dad’s favorite things.
But first I want to talk about apples, particularly Western North Carolina apples. You see, I had no idea apples were such a thing here. I knew they were a North Georgia thing because most September/Octobers we go up to Blue Ridge and Ellijay to pick apples, go on hayrides, and such, but apples are such a thing in this particular area of North Carolina that if Henderson County—the next county over from us*—was a state, it would be the eighth largest producer of apples in the U.S. North Carolina itself is number seven. Henderson County also grows about 80 percent of North Carolina’s crop.
Roughly 60 percent of the crop is used in the food processing industry to make products like applesauce, baby food, juice, and hard cider. (I’ll talk more about the delicious hard cider industry here at a later date.) The Gerber Products Company had a production plant in nearby Asheville from 1959 to 1998 where they made baby food from Henderson County apples along with other local produce. I’m sure just about everyone over the age of 25 reading this had a jar or two or twenty of Gerber baby applesauce made in the Asheville plant when they were little.
Turns out the apples are also delicious in Granny Cantrell’s fried apple pie recipe. If you are unfamiliar with fried pies, first of all, I’m sorry you’ve missed out on this amazing delicacy, and second of all, you may know them by a different name. They are also called hand pies. What they are called seems to be a regional thing, but I’m not sure where those regional boundaries are if they exist. We’ve always called them fried pies, but at the Jeter Mountain Farm I visited last week, they called them hand pies even though they were fried. Fried pies are similar to what many people call turnovers, but turnovers are usually made with a puff pastry and baked. If you call these concoctions hand pies, give us a shout out in the comments and tell us where you are from. It will be our little linguistics experiment.
The historic origins of the hand pie/fried pie are foggy—I’m certain they’ve been around since the advent of bread dough but was too lazy to Google enough data to back that up—but it’s clear that from empanadas to pasties just about every culture has some form of them. If you want to take a dive down a little rabbit hole of hand pie culture, you can do that here.
Basically, a fried pie uses a biscuit-y dough rolled flat and wrapped around a sweet or savory filling—in our case a sweet fruit filling—and then the little halfmoon of yumminess is quickly fried in vegetable oil or Crisco and drained on paper towels. They are super simple to make, and I enjoyed making them with the kids from time to time when they were little.
As a young bride living in Dallas, Texas eons ago, I wanted to make fried pies for my sweet husband and me to take on a hiking trip, so I called Granny Cantrell. These are the instructions she gave me. The pastry crust is based on her biscuit recipe, so it sort of makes sense if you know her biscuit recipe, which you do. It’s here.
With this little info to go on, my first several tries at making fried pies weren’t great. I always put too much water in the apples, so they were watery and not spiced enough, and the pastry wasn’t quite right either and a bit soggy after frying. I was determined to figure out the magic, though, so a few years later I spent an entire weekend tweaking the recipe until I got something resembling what Granny made. Mine still aren’t as good as I remember hers being, and I have no idea why. It’s probably some Granny Magic thing. (I also eventually learned how to spell cinnamon. Notecards don’t have spellcheck.)
First thing you do is cook down the apples. This pot was originally full to the top with chopped Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, and Gala apples, so they cook down a good bit in about 30 minutes. The trick is to add just enough water to keep the apples from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Once they’ve cooked down you add the sugar and spices. I usually use cinnamon, but you can use whatever you like with apples like cloves, allspice, or apple pie spice. Just keep tasting until they are sweetened and spiced the way you like them. These apples were so juicy, I stirred in a teaspoon or two of all purpose flour to thicken the filling a bit.
The dough is made just like buttermilk biscuits, but with a few tweaks to ingredients. You still use self rising flour and shortening, but instead of buttermilk you use “sweet milk,” which is basically regular milk.
(My friend, Christina says she can always tell where I’m cooking by the countertops in the pictures. Christina, this is my Brevard kitchen. I have an island!)
I like to roll out dough with all purpose flour instead of self rising since it has a more neutral taste. I don’t have a rolling pin in Brevard yet, so I used a glass. Improvising! You want to roll these really thin, so a golf ball size pinch of dough rolls out into a good size pastry.
You put the cooked apples in the middle, fold the dough over and crimp with a fork…
Fry in about two inches of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven…
And voila! You have crispy on the outside, super yummy on the inside fried apple pies or apple hand pies, or whatever you want to call them. I like to dust them with sugar while they are resting on paper towels to drain, but it’s not necessary. They also freeze well and make great hiking snacks. I like to reheat them in the toaster oven so the pastry crisps back up. My crew likes to eat them with vanilla ice cream, but I like them just by themselves.
You can get all creative and use this technique to make just about anything. Peach filling is delicious in a fried pie. Sometimes I’ll use leftover Slopping Joe filling to make empanadas which I bake instead of fry. Truly anything you can think of to fold into a biscuit dough pouch will turn out delicious because biscuits are delicious.
I hope you are able to get some of the fresh local apples coming in season right now and try your hand at making fried pies.
*Our place is in Transylvania County which makes me think there might be a happening Halloween scene here. I’ll let you know.
Fried Apple Pie
(makes 10-12 pies)
Apple filling:
6-8 apples, peeled and chopped
Water
1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)
Other spices to taste if you want to add them
Add chopped apples to a saucepan with just enough water to keep them from sticking. Cook down for 30 minutes, stirring frequently and mashing chunks. Stir in sugar and cinnamon/spices. If the filling is too juicy, add a teaspoon or two of all purpose flour.
Dough:
2 cups self rising flour
1/4 cup shortening
1 cup milk
Vegetable Oil
Cut shortening into flour and stir in milk to make a dough. (You can find step by step instructions for making biscuit dough here.) Heat 2 inches of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven to about 375 degrees, so medium high-ish (my stove was set to 7). Pinch off golf ball size pieces of dough and roll into a very thin circle. Spoon apple filling into the middle of the circle, moisten the edges with water, fold over dough, and crimp with a fork. Place in hot oil and cook 2 minutes on one side. Carefully turn the pies over and cook for 2 minutes on the other side. Drain on paper towels. Dust with sugar if desired.
One of my favorite ways to enjoy Henderson County apples:
Until next time,
Karla
My pastry skills are sadly lacking, but I may give your recipe a try! These look so yummy!
I am so happy for you and your new home in Brevard. My husband and I were just there camping in the Davidson River by Mt Pisgah, fly fishing and tent camping. You have found a beautiful area. Congratulations.