The BBQ Fan Club

Apple pie man, I LOVE the stuff. I could die eating one. Give me a good apple pie, some Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and a small wedge of Cabot Special Sharp cheddar cheese on the side, and that is a meal in itself!

Now, if you want to make this American classic even BETTER, read on!

Smoked apple pie!

There are many ways to make this dessert. I will cover the general method, substitute your own touches to make it just the way you like it.

The first step is to smoke your pie filling. You can buy premade, or you can make your own from scratch, either way, once it’s made what you need to do is cold smoke it at about 125 degrees, just enough to make some smoke in your pit.

I use a Backwoods Cooker, what I do is get some apple wood, or some cherry. I take one small piece, lay a quarter chimney of well lit lump charcoal in the midde of my fire pan, lay the one piece of wood on top of that and let it start smoking up nice.

I do not fill the water pan in my Backwoods at all for this recipe.

I then take my apple pie filling, and spread it out flat in either a cookie sheet or other pan that will hold it, you want to make it flat so that all the parts of it can get a good smoke flavor.

I put the filling in it’s pan on the top rack of my cooker, if you use an offset, keep it as far away from the heat as possible. I let it smoke for about 30-45 minutes using my Guru to keep it at 100 to 125. I just want smoke, I don’t want to cook the filling really, enough to get it warm and flowing and to get the smoke inside of it. You don’t want to burn the sugar in your filling either.

After the smoking process, I take the filling out of the cooker, then transfer it to my pie shell. I do usually use a premade one, it saves time and tastes ok, but if you are really trying to impress or using it for a competiton, make a scratch one.

I create the pie in the shell, then, because I have a Backwoods, I get my cooker fired up to 350 - 375. I remove ALL wood, NO MORE SMOKE. it will make the pie shell black, it will still taste good, but it won’t LOOK good. While the cooker gets up to heat, I cover the WHOLE top of the pie with pats of butter. This will help to protect the top of your pie.

When the cooker is up to baking temp, I put the pie in the top rack, close the door, and let the pie bake in the cooker. Usually takes 30-45 minutes, sometimes more if you don’t have a guru to help keep control of your temp. I let the pie bake then take it out and the result is the best pie you have ever tasted.

If you do not have a smoker that you can get up to that kind of heat, go ahead and bake the pie in your oven, you will get a similiar product and it will taste just as good.

Garnish this treat with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream, and a wedge of Cabot Sharp Cheddar cheese. A lot of people give me looks when I talk about having cheese with apple pie, the cheese brings out the sweetness and taste of the apples as you nibble on it, and of course the ice cream just makes it right!

Enjoy this, play around with the directions to suit your needs. This will wow your friends and family!