Review: Marie Callender's Fruit Pot Pies

In September 2010, I reviewed Banquet Fruit Pies. You can read the full review here, but the capsule version of it is: They suck.

Now, ConAgra has expanded their line of personal-sized fruit pies by bringing the concept over to their Marie Callender's brand.  Allow me to present Marie Callender's Apple, Cherry Berry, and Peach fruit pies:

Marie Callender's Pot Pies are measurably better than Banquet Pot Pies, even though they are produced by the same company.  So I figured that the same might apply to these fruit pies.  WRONG.

There are only two differences between Banquet fruit pies and Marie Callender's fruit pies: The Marie Callender version is slightly larger, and the crusts are dusted with cinnamon sugar.  Otherwise, they could be interchangeable.  The fillings are mostly blandly-flavored goop, and the fruit within is sparse and mushy. They're every bit as crappy as the cheaper Banquet version.

Seriously, these pies are shit. Avoid at all costs.

Bacon Lattice Pie

Happy Mother's Day! How about a nice slice of Bacon Lattice Apple Pie?

The recipe has been wandering around the internet for about three years now, but it's pretty simple to do without a real recipe.  Just make your usual apple pie preparations but add four slices of crispy-cooked bacon, crumbled, into the filling.  Instead of using a top crust, build a lattice crust using strips of raw bacon.  For a ten-inch deep dish pie, it should take about a pound of standard sliced bacon all told. I considered using bacon fat in the crust, but Lynnafred talked me out of it, saying that it would overpower the apples.  She might have been right - the standard crust along with the bacon in the filling and on top gave a very good flavor balance to the whole thing. Maryanne was a bit dubious of the very idea of a bacon-topped pie at first, but because she's a sport she gave it a try, and actually liked it.

It was fun and delicious. Sometimes dumb internet stuff works out pretty well.

Handwritten Recipes: Pie Crust

Today's selection from the Handwritten Recipes blog is Pie Crust.  The recipe was found in a copy of An Old Sweetheart of Mine by James Whitcomb Riley (Bowen-Merrill, 1902), and it's a variation of the Never Fail Pie Crust recipe that I shared back in February 2010.  There are some differences in proportions and quantity, but the inclusion of vinegar and egg reveal their close relationship.

The recipe as found is a simple list of ingredients:

Pie Crust

3 C. flour
1 C. lard
Salt
5 tbl water
1 tbl vinegar
1 egg

It's possible that at least some people reading this may not have had experience making a pie crust from scratch.  So let's standardize the recipe by reformatting the ingredient list and adding some instructions:

Pie Crust
Makes pastry for 1 deep-dish pie

3 cups flour
1 rounded teaspoon salt
1 cup lard (½ of a 1-pound box)
5 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 egg

In a large bowl, stir the flour and salt together.  Add the lard to the bowl.  Using a pastry blender or a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, cut the lard into the flour until the mixtures resembles coarsely grated bread crumbs.

Beat the water, vinegar, and egg together in a small bowl until well-mixed.  Pour this into the flour mixture all at once and stir roughly with a fork until the pastry comes together into a ball of dough.  (In a stand mixer, switch from the whisk to the dough hook and pour the liquid in while the mixer is running.) The dough will be somewhat sticky.

Flour your hands and a breadboard or tabletop well, and remove the pastry from the bowl.  Knead it lightly two or three times - just long enough for the extra flour to take away most of the stickiness.  Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic or toss it into a plastic food storage bag, and put it into the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

When ready to make a pie, divide the dough ball into 2 halves.  Roll each half out on a floured surface, using additional flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking to the surface or to the rolling pin.

To try out the recipe, I made a simple, 9-inch apple pie.  The pastry held together nicely, but I found it to be a bit more susceptible to cracking than my usual Never Fail recipe.  Nevertheless, it handled and rolled out pretty easily.  It was totally delicious - perfectly flaky, as you can see from the photo here, and just melt-in-your mouth tender.  And pretty easy to make as pie crusts go.  Definitely easy enough for a beginner, so if you're in the habit of buying those refrigerated pie crust circles at the supermarket, you might want to try this recipe just for kicks.

The recipe, as I noted, would be enough for a 10-inch deep dish pie.  I had enough pastry left over from the trimmings to make two little apple pies for the kids.  Gathering up the trimmings, giving them a bit of a knead to make sure they held together, and then rolling them out did not make the pastry tough - those "second rollings" were just as awesome as the Master Pie.

Another keeper!

See the original recipe at Handwritten Recipes here.

The Pot Pie Buyer's Guide

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved pot pies.  Back then, my mom used to buy Banquet pies because they were infinitely cheap - something like 20 cents apiece, on sale - and a bunch of hungry kids could be fed for a couple of bucks.  Although Banquet pies aren't anything like the best on the market, I still buy them now and then.  We had them often enough as kids that they're comfort food.

Anyway, over the past couple of months, I've been buying and eating various brands of commercial pot pies in an effort to rank them by taste and quality.  Price and overall quality are pretty closely related with pot pies, so when you go shopping for any of the brands I've reviewed you'd be safe in assuming that the lowest-ranked pies are going to make the smallest dent in your lunch budget.  But even with that in mind, you should know that any of them, even the worst of the bunch, are still enjoyable in their own way. With only one perhaps surprising exception, I liked every pie I tried and would buy them again.

So, let's take a look, starting at the bottom.

LOWEST QUALITY:

Sharing last place are Valu-Time (made for and distributed by Topco,) Banquet (made by ConAgra,) and Bremer (one of ALDI's house brands) 7-ounce frozen pies, which are so similar that they are virtually indistinguishable.  All three have top and bottom crusts, a large amount of salty, artificial-tasting gravy, and little squares of soft spongy "meat" which are actually cut-up bits of processed, pressed, and formed poultry loaf.  The meat also varies in color from light to dark, simulating actual white and dark meat from poultry. Vegetables include potatoes, carrots, and peas, but like the meat, they are in small pieces, thinly distributed.  Although the crusts of  these pies are thin, the top crusts at least cook up fairly flaky.   I've found that the bottom crusts, of the Valu-Time and Banquet pies seem to  have a tendency to remain undercooked and a little gooey even after the rest of the pie is ready when the pies are prepared in a microwave.  For all their faults, however, I still keep coming back to these cheap pies - especially Banquet - for nostalgia's sake. 

Banquet pot pies can be found just about everywhere, usually for about a dollar when they're not on sale.  Valu-Time pot pies can be found at any supermarket that sells Topco products, such as Big Y, Harris Teeter, and Price Chopper.  The price varies depending on the store, but Big Y was selling them for under a dollar and I suspect that's close to the going rate.  And Bremer pies, of course, can be found at ALDI in the frozen prepared foods section.  When I bought them, they were a pretty good deal at 85 cents each.

SLIGHTLY BETTER THAN LOWEST:

There isn't a lot of difference between the Swanson 7-ounce pot pie and the low-quality pies I've already mentioned.  The crust is just about the same and the fillings are similar.  But the gravy in the Swanson pie seemed thicker and more natural-tasting to me, so I thought it should be in a slightly better category.

However, all things being equal, I pass up the Swanson for the Banquet most of the time because Swanson is priced higher, and the difference in quality is not at all commensurate with the difference in price.



GOOD QUALITY

Marie Callender's 7 ounce pies are made by ConAgra - just like the Banquet pies - but the difference is so striking that you'd never guess they were produced by the same company!  These pies have white meat only (still cut from formed loaves) in much larger cuts and more generous distribution, and much better gravy.  These pies also have top and bottom crusts, but the pastry is thicker, flakier, and just overall better than the low quality versions.

These 7-ounce pies can be a bit harder to find than their slightly-larger 10-ounce version, but you can usually find them in multi-packs at Costco.

Marie Callender's 10-ounce pies are exactly the same composition as the smaller 7-ounce version.  The same good gravy, the same big chunks of white meat and larger vegetable cuts, the same flaky pastry - just 3 ounces more of it.  Ten-ounce pies are easier to find in the stores than the 7-ounce sizes.

Bremer Select 10-ounce pies (by ALDI) are sold in 4-pack boxes only. They are 2-crust pies with excellent pastry (thick and flaky) good chicken gravy, large chunks of real white-meat chicken, and generous vegetables.  I was pretty impressed by the quality of these pies, but while I consider them to be superior to the Marie Callender pies, they are similar enough to share a rating.

VERY GOOD QUALITY:

Boston Market 16 oz pie, top and bottom crust.  The pie has lots of meat (white and dark) but also seems to have odd chunks of cartilage.  The gravy is quite good, and the vegetables - carrot, corn, and green bean. - are generous and fresh-tasting. The crust is flaky and decent, even on the bottom. This pie should be a winner, but there is something about the Boston Market pies I've tried that almost nauseates me. The  gravy has a "slippery" mouthfeel, a vague and unpleasant gumminess that triggers my gag reflex. Because the other aspects of the pie are so good, though, I'm willing to give Boston Market the benefit of the doubt - it's possible that there's something about the recipe that I don't care for, but you won't mind.  So here it is, in the "Very Good" category.

Meanwhile, the Stouffer's 16-ounce pot pie is really great.  It's loaded with lots of big pieces of white-meat chicken, great veggies, and the gravy tastes, no kidding, like homemade.  The crust is just the right thickness, delicious tender and flaky.  I guess the only fault with it would be that it's a bit saltier than the Boston Market (still less salty than the bottom-rated pies, though.)

EXCELLENT QUALITY:

It is a testament to the outstanding attention to quality at Budd Foods of Manchester New Hampshire that all three of the pies rated "Excellent" are their products.

Bistro Cuisine chicken pot pies are made by Budd and advertised as "The World's Finest Chicken Pie."  That's not too much of an exaggeration. The single crust on top is a generous circle of awesome puff pastry which sits atop delicious gravy, true white meat chicken, and vegetables including corn, peas, and carrots.  My only complaint about Bistro Cuisine was that the gravy was very thick - thicker than I like it - but the other qualities of the pie are so outstanding that I can't take points off.

Mrs. Budd's Fully Baked White Meat Chicken Pie is usually sold in the refrigerated prepared meats section.  All they require is a thorough heating in the oven and they're good to go, but they do include microwave instructions.  After our local Shaw's supermarket closed, I hadn't realized Mrs. Budd's were still available around here until I got a Tweet from Sproffee one afternoon:  "This microwave pot pie is surprisingly and delightfully delicious."  She pretty much summed up Mrs. Budd's pies right there.  Big chunks of chicken breast meat, fresh-tasting veggies, and homestyle gravy bubbling under a delicious shortcrust pastry.  Well worth the $3.50 or so at the store.

I have similar high praise for Mrs. Budd's Fully Cooked White Meat Chicken Pie with broccoli, carrots, and pearl onions.  Once again, this is a single-crust pie which is topped with an excellent, flaky, tender disk of shortcrust pastry.  The homestyle gravy is just as delicious in this pie as in the other Mrs. Budd's offering, though it has a bit of a greenish tinge to it from the broccoli.  There are big chunks of white meat, and the broccoli isn't in tiny little mushy bits but rather in two or three generous florets which still maintain their shape and their almost-crispy texture.  I was quite favorably surprised at that (I expected soft and squishy overcooked broccoli.)  The only problem I had was that I just couldn't find any pearl onions in either of the pies I bought.  Maybe they melted away into the gravy during the cooking time?  No matter what happened to those elusive onions, though, it won't stop me from recommending the pies.

BEST IN SHOW:

As I said in the beginning of this post, I really like pot pies and I'd gladly enjoy even the worst ones on this list.  But there is one brand I tried that is head and shoulders above the rest.  It is also by far the most expensive of the pies - but remember, I did warn you that quality and price are quite intimately related when it comes to pot pie selection.


Willow Tree Chicken Pot Pie, made in Attleboro MA and distributed primarily in New England, is a top-crust-only pie which comes frozen in an aluminum pie pan and must be baked in either a conventional or a toaster oven, no microwaves allowed.  The crust is gorgeous and tastes homemade, and so does the splendid chicken gravy.  But what is most noticeable about Willow Tree pies is what's missing.  There are no vegetables or filler of any kind in them, they're just meat, gravy, and crust.

There are no tricks here, no compressing white chicken meat into an easily-portioned rectangular mass, not even any slipping in smaller irregular bits to round out the weight for the packing scale.  The picture speaks for itself and shows you exactly what you get under that pastry: big chunks of chicken breast meat, cooked absolutely perfectly, with a generous portion of gravy (enough to dress a scoop of mashed potatoes) and a delicious circle of pastry as well.  This pie truly deserves its "Best In Show" honors.
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