Tremendous Pecan Pie

Let me tell you something. Pecan pie is the most misunderstood pie in the entire pie kingdom — and yes, pies have a kingdom, it's a hierarchy, the food historians have run the numbers, I've talked to them, smart people, very smart people, the smartest — and pecan pie sits at the top of that kingdom whether the other pies like it or not. Apple pie is fine. Apple pie is the senator of pies. But pecan pie? Pecan pie is the KING. End of discussion.

And most pecan pies are too sweet. I've had pecan pies in Georgia, in Texas, even in places that have no business making pecan pies like Connecticut, and yet they keep trying, it's brave, it's sad, but it's brave — and most of them are CANDY in a crust. They taste like someone melted a corn-syrup factory and poured it on top of nuts. That's not a pie. That's a crime against pecans. We are not committing crimes here. We are making pie. Plain and simple.

The secret is brown butter. My grandmother — and she was a tough woman, she once chased a raccoon out of the pantry with a wooden spoon, true story, the raccoon never came back, the raccoon told the OTHER raccoons, the whole raccoon community gave her a wide berth after that — my grandmother taught me this when I was small. You brown the butter first. You take it to that nutty, golden, almost-burnt place where it smells like caramel and toffee had a baby, and THEN you build the filling. It changes everything. People take one bite, they look up, they say 'what did you do.' I'll tell you what I did. I browned the butter. Tremendous. Tremendous.

This is the pie that ends Thanksgiving. Not in a sad way — in the BEST way. People stop talking. People put down the forks between bites, and then they pick the forks back up because the pie demands it, the pie has authority, the pie has TENURE. You brown the butter, you wait the three hours, you serve the slice, you become a legend in your own family. They'll tell stories about this pie. Possibly to a therapist someday. That's how good it is. Now go eat.