Simple pie pastry recipe using beef tallow (and butter)
Make excellent pie pastry with such simple, wholesome ingredients: beef tallow, salt, flour, ice water, and butter.
Make a simple whole food version of pie pastry using beef tallow and butter. (I might add that it’s absolutely delicious!)
Pie is love
Change my mind about this. Wait, stop. I actually don’t think you can.
Many of you have been following this blog for years. (Humblest thank-yous, blushes, awkward shrugs and virtual hugs for my gentle readers.) You may feel like you know my folks, Jim and Elna, as I write about them often. Dad has been making fancy French rolling pins for my blog shop for several years.
My folks are going through a rough time of it. Dear sweet little mom is having memory issues–not something any of us ever anticipated–and Dad is caring for her around the clock. Some days, Mom does just fine. Others, she hankers to “go home” all the day long. Nothing anybody says will change her notion that they are merely visiting the home that they’ve actually been living in for over three decades. The current visit is long enough, says she. “When are we going home?” She asks. Over and over.
Mom just turned 89, and Dad is 90.
I know what homesickness feels like, but I can’t imagine feeling it day after day after day. Poor Mom. And poor Dad.
When I see that Dad is about to crack from his patience being tested all day long, I have one thought: I ought to make dad a pie. Any type will do. My Dad is a inveterate pie-fancier, and has been ever since I met him (okay, for as long as I can remember). The man just loves pie. Mom used to make the best pie (sad sigh). Nobody’s else’s pies came close to hers. Shoot. Even today, I rarely make pie because I don’t think it measures up . . . to Mom’s.
But a girl can try…
But…guess what? I’ve been experimenting with making pie pastry out of beef tallow (lard works well too) and butter. I believe Mom probably used lard primarily, but there were probably years that she used Crisco shortening, too.
I’ve been making my own beef tallow from the beef fat that comes with the beef that we order every year. This tallow is creamy, white, and I’ve made the happy discovery that it makes beautiful pie crusts! (Though I make them myself!)
Public Service Announcement: I love to read recipe books, and I’ve learned a bunch about why you might want to consume beef tallow and lard, rather than vegetable oils and Crisco, in the following books:
- Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan, M.D.
- Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon
Now! Let’s learn how to…
Go to work with that pastry cutter!
Make Pie Crust Healthy Again!
hehee
If we’re going to make pie–and we are going to make pie, dang it!–we might as well make it with healthier ingredients.
Here are the quick instructions, and if you like to print off the entire recipe, scroll on down!
Supplies:
- pastry cutter
- medium-sized bowl
- rolling pin
- pie plate
- waxed paper (optional, but it does make rolling out your pastry easier)
It’s easy to make a beautiful beef tallow like this, yourself, at home. A monkey could do it. 🙂
Ingredients:
- White and/or white whole wheat flour (I personally like to use half white, and half white whole wheat flour.)
- salt
- butter, cold
- beef tallow (or lard), cold
- ice water, very cold
- First, sock your butter, tallow, and ice water into the freezer for an hour or two. If you have room, put your flour in there too. The colder all your ingredients are, the better!
- Measure your flour into a medium-sized bowl, and stir in the salt.
- Add butter and tallow (lard can be used, as well) and use a pastry cutter to cut it in.
- Add ice water and mix with a fork, then form a ball with your hands.
- Lightly dust your surface with flour, then roll out the dough with your rolling pin. (*pro tip* I roll out my pie pastry between two sheets of waxed paper. When it is as thin as I want it, I use the waxed paper to lift it and transfer into the pie plate, peeling the two layers of waxed paper off as I slide it in.)
- Note: If you’re making a custard pie (pumpkin, for example, hmm…coconut cream, French silk, cress, etc.), you’ll need to pre-bake the crust for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. I poke the crust all over with a fork before I slide it into the oven. (Other pies do not need this pre-baking, and neither do quiches, as a matter of fact.)
This pastry works well for pie, but also for apple dumplings!
Simple Pie pastry with beef tallow (or lard) and butter
Ingredients
- 2.5 cups white flour (or half white and half white whole wheat)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 Tb butter, cold
- 6 Tb beef tallow (or lard), cold
- 12-16 Tb ice water, very cold
Instructions
- First, stir together the dry ingredients.
- Cut in the butter and tallow (or lard) with a pastry cutter, until it's well incorporated and the lumps are pea-sized.
- Stir in ice water, 1 or 2 Tablespoons at a time with a fork, until the dough begins to make a ball. Basic pastry best practices: stir just until incorporated, and don't overwork the dough.
- Roll out your pastry between two pieces of waxed paper, until desired thickness, and gently pull away the waxed paper as you place it in the pie plate Look at you. You just made a very fine pie pastry!.
That’s it! Easy-peasy, huh?
Don’t forget to Pin it!
This simple pie pastry recipe works well with apple dumplings, too!
Again, humble thanks–awkward shrugs, blushes and virtual hugs, as well. 🙂
xo
Amy
- How to make tallow out of beef fat (easy-peasy crock pot recipe!)
- What’s Going on Around Here, Anyway? volume 1-25
6 thoughts on “Simple pie pastry recipe using beef tallow (and butter)”
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Good to see a new post. Sadly life gets in the way of checking regularly, but I do enjoy reading them when I get a chance.
Aww thank you, Dave. It’s nice to hear from you, and I hope that all is well in your neck of the woods.
I am going to try your recipe, using Janie’s Mill All Purpose flour.
Heirloom grains. You might like trying it.
That sounds like a great idea! Do you order your flour, or buy it locally? It sounds like something I need to try!
Hello Amy,
I’m new to your blog. The blog name cracks me up by the way. I surfed in from the Googles when I was searching recently for a tallow pie crust because I wasn’t really sure if I could use it or not. I figured it was probably possible. I used to use Crisco because that’s what my mom used when she taught me how to bake growing up. But I honestly find it so bland. There’s something slightly savory about lard or Tallow. Also, it just makes a really flaky amazing crust. Apparently Crisco no longer partially hydrogenates their vegetable shortening. They changed over to full hydrogenation in 2007. And this is apparently much better, because when you heat it, it does not turn into trans fats. The hydrogen bonds are more stable in the fully hydrogenated version. That said, I would absolutely rather use animal products to make my crust! I have heard that leaf lard (the visceral fat of the animal) is actually the best, but it’s really hard to find where I am. I did discover that there is a wagyu beef Tallow in the baking aisle of my local grocery store, so I decided to try with that. I’ve already made this recipe once and it came out pretty good. I think I may have overworked slightly though. Some areas were light and crispy and others were a little bit tough.
I did everything as written though I would have appreciated the amounts in grams instead of cups. Grams is more accurate in my opinion and it will give me the most repeatable baked goods over and over again. So just a point of feedback. But otherwise this is a great recipe. The amount of water I added kind of varies. I think it depends on the humidity the day I make it. But most recently I used about 112 G of water and that was sufficient. (For anybody reading, who was curious.)
I made a purple sweet potato pie filling for it. At first I blind baked it but I probably did not need to do that in hindsight, and then the edges of the crust started to get a little burned. So I had to rescue it with aluminum foil. I think you could probably blind bake it a little bit, especially if you roll yours out a little too thick and you want to make sure it’s cooked all the way through. Just don’t do 15 minutes in the oven like I did! Lol!
Lastly, I’m very sorry to hear about your parents. I lost all of my grandparents already as well as my father. He passed in March this year, 2025 at age 70. But yeah… It’s really difficult seeing somebody you love spiral. And by spiral I mean dementia. It’s really heartbreaking. Stay strong. Keep making awesome recipes!
Cheers from St Louis,
– Kate
Kate,
What a sweet, thoughtful comment. I do appreciate your feedback. I’ve been cooking and baking for a long time, and I appreciate the GRAMS recommendation. I do tend to cook and bake more and more by “feel,” so I doubt if I’d ever measure that particularly, but I do admire those of you who do!! My dad died three weeks ago, so now my siblings and I are taking turns caring for my mom, with some hired help. We are determined to let her live in her own home as long as we can manage it. Dementia is a horrible condition, but we have adjusted to it. It’s still hard to watch her go through it, though. Thanks again for your comment. xoxox –Amy