Old Fashioned Suet Pie Crust
Suet makes it better.
By Erin Henderson
My Nanny’s been gone a long time now, but when we remember her, more than anything, we remember her unbeatable pie crust.
She made it with lard. Flaky, golden, layered, and both tender and crisp, everyone agrees this crust was her true life’s triumph.
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A proper British lady (you never met anyone more fiercely devoted to Mother England), my dad’s mum came from an age where things were done the long way and made use of what was around – one of them being animal fat for pastry.
Suet, which is the hardened fat around a cow’s kidneys, is the weapon of choice for old-fashioned pie dough. You can find vegetarian versions, which seems a bit stupid to me (just use Cristco and leave it at that), and you can also use pig or lamb suet, but traditional beef suet is the one for me. It’s cheaper than butter (which, holy smokes, the prices of butter these days! I can feel myself summoning my Nanny from the beyond), yields a fantastic crust, and is easy (enough) to work with.
If you’re worried about a pie crust smelling like a New York strip, you needn’t fret; suet is processed in such a way that it’s snowy white (I mean, it is fat, after all), aroma-less, and, while I’ve never eaten suet straight, I’m pretty sure tasteless.
I’m not a baker, I typically leave that to my sister who is a dynamo with a rolling pin and stand mixer, but, as the days got colder, I started to crave a new kitchen project, and settled on a traditional British steak pie. With a suet crust.
Old Fashioned Suet Crust
Short crust is easy and fast, just make sure to weigh and measure precisely. You also want to keep the ingredients very cold for proper flaking. In winter, I just put all my ingredients on the back porch, including my work bowl to make sure everything is as cold as possible.
You can use a butter knife to slice your lard into the flour, but it’s tedious. Much faster and easier to use a food processor fitted with an S blade.
This will probably yield enough crust for two pie pans, both top and bottom. More if you only use the top. Still more if you opt for individual pies. The good news is suet crust last a couple of days, tightly wrapped, in the fridge, and about three months in the freezer, just thaw in the fridge over night before using.
Makes: about 2 ½ lbs of dough
Chef level: moderate
Special equipment: digital scale, fine mesh sieve, food processor
Ingredients:
- 650g all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 250g suet, diced (this will probably already be done for you.)
- Pinch salt
- 200ml ice cold water
How to Make It:
- Run your flour through a fine mesh sieve to get out the lumps and bumps. Add it to a food processor fitted with an S blade.
- Add your suet to the flour.
- Run the food processor for about 15 seconds, just long enough to incorporate the suet and flour into a bread-crumb like consistency.
- Dump the suet/flour mixture into a cold bowl. Using your fingers, dig a well in the centre of the mixture and pour in about 100ml of ice water.
- Using all your fingers like a whisky, “turn” the dough in the bowl to have it come together. As it starts to clump add more water as needed until you get a shaggy dough. (Suet does suck up water so it’s possible you might need more than 200ml. If that’s the case, just add it in splashes until the dough has just come together. Too much water makes a tough dough.)
- Lightly dust a work surface with four. Dump the craggy dough onto it and work it quickly and gently into a smooth, pliable ball, that still has texture from the suet.
- Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and allow it to relax in the fridge for about an hour or until needed.
- You can make this dough up to two days in advance of rolling it out.