Tomato Pie with a Flaky Tallow Crust

There's a version of dinner that only exists for about six weeks a year: tomatoes so ripe they barely survive the drive home, sliced thick and baked into a cheddar custard on a crust that stays crisp underneath. This is that dinner. It's a Southern tomato pie built on our half-tallow crust, and it's the best thing we've cooked all summer!

The tomatoes came from Debbie, Amanda's mom, who has handled our fulfillment for the past year. The farm is her husband Ed's, and right now it's buried in tomato season. Tomato season means seconds: fruit with a bruise or a soft spot that isn't pretty enough for the farm stand. Nobody should be composting a tomato that's 90% perfect, least of all one Ed grew. That's an offcut, and we know what to do with offcuts. Cut away the bad spot, and the rest is pie.

The crust is the part we'd put up against anybody's. Half 100% grass-fed beef tallow, half butter: the butter shards bake into flaky layers, and the tallow keeps the whole thing tender and forgiving to work with.

Our filling is adapted from Vaughn Vreeland's heirloom tomato and cheddar pie for NYT Cooking. We traded the buttermilk crust for our tallow one, added garlic, parsley, sour cream, and parmesan, and swapped the pretty heirlooms for the tomatoes that needed a home.

What You Need

Make the Crust

20 minutes of work, then an hour in the fridge.

1. Cube the tallow and butter and freeze them for 15 minutes.
2. Whisk the flour and salt in a wide bowl. Cut in the cold fats with a pastry blender or your fingertips until the biggest pieces are pea-sized.
3. Drizzle in the ice water a tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork. Stop the moment the dough holds together when squeezed.
4. Press it into a disc, wrap it, and refrigerate at least an hour (up to 2 days).

Blind Bake It

1. Roll the chilled dough into a 12-inch round and fit it into a 9-inch pie plate without stretching. Fold the overhang under and crimp.
2. Poke the bottom and sides with a fork, then freeze the shaped crust for 15 minutes while the oven heats to 400°F.
3. Line the crust with foil, fill with pie weights or dried beans, and bake on the middle rack for 15 minutes.
4. Lift out the foil and weights and bake another 5 to 10 minutes, until golden all over. Cool it in the pan.

Salt the Tomatoes

Thirty minutes, almost all of it hands-off.

1. Trim away anything bruised or soft. With farm seconds that takes a minute and costs you almost nothing.
2. Slice the tomatoes ½ inch thick and lay them on a paper-towel-lined sheet pan.
3. Sprinkle with the ½ teaspoon of salt and let them sit 30 minutes, then pat the tops dry.

Build and Bake

1. Heat the oven to 375°F.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the buttermilk, sour cream, mayonnaise, egg and yolk, Dijon, garlic, black pepper, and cayenne until smooth. It'll look loose. It sets in the oven. Fold in the parsley and chives.
3. Shingle half the tomato slices over the cooled crust and pour the custard over them.
4. Scatter on the cheddar and parmesan, shingle the rest of the tomatoes on top, and press them in gently.
5. Bake on a rimmed baking sheet for 50 to 60 minutes, until the filling is set and the top is deeply browned. If the crust edge darkens faster than the filling, tent it with foil.

The Verdict

Let it rest at least an hour. The custard needs it to slice clean. Then eat it warm. Cold-from-the-fridge has its defenders, and a slice of this made a great breakfast the next morning, but warm is where the cheddar and the crust are at their best. Trust us on this one.

One pie used up a pile of tomatoes that weren't going to make the stand, and it fed us twice.

Cut the bad spot off and cook it. That's the same argument we make about the fifth quarter.

The crust starts with our 100% grass-fed beef tallow: slow-rendered in small batches, one ingredient in the jar. If you've only used tallow for searing and roasting, the pie crust is the move you're missing.

Shop the products in this post

Beef Tallow

$15.99

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Render Trio

$49.99

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