Many people don't know what a Dutch Apple Pie
is, which is the crumb topped apple pie. It's super easy to make and so much better than a store bought one! I made this particular recipe yesterday morning and enjoyed it at a BBQ
that afternoon!Ingredients:
1 9 inch, deep-dish pie crust
Filling:
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. packed light brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
5 1/2 c. peeled, sliced apples
3 TBS all purpose flour
Topping:
1/4 c. packed light brown sugar
3/4 c. all purpose flour
1/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. butter, at room temperature
Preheat your oven to 375. Bake
the thawed pie crust
for about 5 minutes. Just until it begins to bubble. You don't want to cook it all the way. Remove the crust from the oven and set it aside. While the crust is in the oven, being peeling and slicing your apples
and place them in a large bowl
. A question I hear a lot is "How many apples does it take to make five and a half cups
?" as well as "What kind of apples are best for pie?" I will answer both questions here! First of all, I find that Granny Smith apples
make the best pie. The flesh stands up well to the heat and doesn't turn to mush and the tartness of the apple is well balanced with the sugars to make a great tasting pie. The apples mellow as they bake and the pie is not sour at all! So, pick 3 average sized (about the size of your fist) apples and that should be adequate. It usually comes out to almost exactly the right amount. Plus, if it is a touch under or over it isn't going to hurt anything. So, back to our pie. Peel,core and slice your apples
. I usually cut mine into quarters, core them
, and slice them on the small side so I can get a better coating of the rest of the ingredients on the apples. As you cut them up, go ahead and toss them into the bowl. After that, pour the lemon juice in (yes, concentrate is perfectly fine) and toss the apples to coat them. It will keep the apples from turning. Then measure out the rest of the ingredients for the filling as listed and put them on top, then mix the apples with it until they are all coated well and spoon it into the pie crust. Arrange the apples and filling so that you have a fairly even layer across the pie shell. Now to make that delicious crumbly topping. Place all the dry ingredients in to a medium sized bowl and cut the butter into slices on top. Take a fork and mash it through until the mixture is crumbly. This is going to take a little work, but it is so worth it. It may seem like there is not enough butter there to mix in, but there is. Just be patient and you will get there.
Spread the topping out over the top of the apple mixture, making sure it all has a coating, and put it into the oven for about 45 minutes. Make sure that you bake the pie on a cookie sheet
to prevent any juices from bubbling over and spilling in to the oven. After 45 mintues, give the pie a look and make sure it isn't wet looking anywhere and is evenly browned. If it isn't evenly browned, or wet looking on top, just give it a few more minutes or turn it. You can either let this pie cool, eat it hot out of the oven with or without ice cream, but once you taste it, you will never by another frozen apple pie again!
. I don't have a huge amount of experience with a lot of different things, but I will share what I do know. A big part of choosing the type of 
you want is in personal tastes, and for me- what I have on hand. 
- I really don't care for a plain flour breading. It doesn't have much substance to it and it doesn't hold much of a crunch. It's true that you can double dip it, but it still doesn't have much crunch to it. You can add a good bit of 
to this type of breading, but you can also impart that flavor to other breadings, so to me, there is really just no point in doing plain flour. 
. It is however, easy to burn. When it gets over cooked, it just has a bad, greasy flavor to it. A good thing with cornmeal is to mix it with something else. For instance. if you enjoy the lighter flour breading but want a little more crunch, mix your breading as 3 parts flour to one part cornmeal. It does also give the breading a different texture. 
. The give a little of that corn flavor and a little nuttiness to what ever you are making. Make sure you crush your 
well, I prefer to put them in a large 
bag with the air all squeezed out and use a 
(or a can of what evers handy!) You want the pieces to be mostly uniform so that the coating browns evenly and doesn't burn. Also, make sure you do add a little flour to the mix with your seasonings. A tablespoon or two should do it, unless you are making a huge batch of fried food. The purpose is to just fill in those tiny gaps that the cornflakes don't cover. Also, you don't want to use the pre-sweetened corn flakes. The sugar on them will scortch and burn!
. Grind them up just like you would cornflakes and add some seasoning to it (
is a favorite), don't forget a touch of flour and coat away! I particularly enjoy a pretzel coating on pork chops. You do want to make sure that the pretzels are crushed well. While a few pea sized pieces of cornflake will work ok, it just doesn't work the same with pretzels. 
- This will vary some depending on the type of cracker that you have on hand. Again, a good use for stale 
so that they aren't wasted in the garbage. Literally any kind of 
can work for a breading, it is just going to depend on what you are using it for, how fine you crush it and what you are serving with it. Try them all out and see what fits your style and taste the best. Using the 
type cracker will give an herbier flavor to your food and with something like a 
, you will get a nuttier flavor. Plain 
work well and provide a great crunchy coating without changing the flavor of the meat much. 
crackers work well too! Again, if you aren't getting a good even coating or have gaps, either crunch your crackers up finer or add a tablespoon of flour. 
. You can use the 
that you make at Thanksgiving, 
or anything that you have on hand. The key to this is that you have to start with the hard, dry bits of bread and grind them down to a more manageable size. You may or may not have to add a bit of flour with this coating, depending on how much of the seasoning mix at the bottom of the package you get with the bits. 
- I haven't used panko with a lot of things, but I am getting more experience with it. I do really enjoy it as a breading for fried foods because it gives a wonderful crunch and, even though I don't use a butter flavored shortening, the foods have a rich, buttery taste to them when I use panko. Also, if you double dip with panko- WOW talk about a super crunch coating!!! 
to dampen the skin of whatever meat they are frying up. I prefer to use mostly 
. I do put a little milk in it, but the point is to moisten the outside of the meat so that the breading will stick to it and bind with it to make the coating. My experience is that the more viscous mixture that is mostly eggs makes more of the breading stick to the 
. I suppose that if you are just using flour or cornmeal that you could use just milk, but for the heavier coatings, make sure that you do use egg. It's stronger and will hold it better!
is that you can use almost any kind of dry grain product. Experiment around and see what tastes the best to you and your family. If you want to fry something but don't know how to bread it, look around your cabinets and see what you have that's stale or old. Use it instead of trashing it! I hate to throw out food! Or simply think about the flavor of what that random grain product is and what it would taste like as a breading!