Food
Oyster Hand Pies
Lesson time 33:10 min
Mashama describes the deep connection between the people of Savannah and the water, and shares options for hand pie fillings. She details ingredients in the crust and steps to make the dough, then she shows you how to cook and fill the pies.
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Topics include: Pie Dough · The Filling · Filling the Dough · Plating
Teaches Southern Cooking
James Beard Award–winning chef Mashama Bailey teaches you techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes—from grits to gumbo.
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[UPBEAT JAZZ] MASHAMA BAILEY: One of the things that really surprised me about moving to Savannah, or moving to the Georgia coast in general, was the connection to the water. One of the very first ingredients that I learned to work with in that region was oysters. And I wanted to figure out different ways to do it. I would read books from the 1930s that talked about different ways of serving oysters either pickling them, or roasting them, baking them, or grilling them. But I'd never really seen them in a hand pie. And so I wanted to really embrace the fact that you can use all the ingredients in this area in whatever way you want to do it. Hand pies can be comprised of anything. What's left over from the night before, you can use that as a filling for your hand pies. So instead of doing a sweet hand pie, which you normally find in this area, that has apple filling, or peach filling, I wanted to do something savory, and I wanted to celebrate the coast. Let's talk about the ingredients. We have apple cider vinegar. We have sugar and salt. We have unsalted butter, so you can control the flavor. And we also have bleached, all purpose flour, made of wheat. It's just sort of like your favorite flour to use. It's nothing very special about it. But the reason why we want to use this, is because it gives us a lighter finished product, and a flakier crust. So let's get started. I'm going to add this vinegar to my ice water, and set it to the side. You want to keep everything as cold as possible. As the dough heats up, that allows for the milk solids to kind of escape within the dough, which causes the flakes. You work with warm flour, warm water, or warm butter, it's too rapid. It doesn't give the dough time enough to heat up, develop some color, and create a crust. So you want to start with the cold ingredients, so by the time you put it in the oven, the heat is working with you, and not against you. We're going to add our sugar. And we're going to add our salt. You can also make this pie crust by hand. So if you want to do it by hand, you want to mix all your dry ingredients together before you add your butter. We'll do this half the flour, half the butter, pulse it. And then we'll add the other half flour, half butter, pulse it, before we combine our wet ingredients. I'm going to stick my hand in here and just make sure these butter pieces are separated. And I'm going to go ahead and pulse. You're going to pulse about five or six times. We'll add the rest. And I'm going to do the same thing. Just make sure they're all separated. Your hands will warm up the butter. So you don't want to play around with it too much. And it's nice to have like a little flour on your hands so the butter isn't in direct contact with your body heat. Here's a good opportunity to take a look at what the size of the butter should look like. And it should be about pea size. So if you have some pieces that are too big, you can kind of pick them...
About the Instructor
Through her award-winning Savannah restaurant, The Grey, Chef Mashama Bailey has brought worldwide acclaim to the rich, layered traditions of African American Southern cooking. Now the James Beard Award–winning chef shows you traditional and reimagined techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes. From pork shank and collard greens to gumbo and grits, explore a world of history, texture, and taste.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Mashama Bailey
James Beard Award–winning chef Mashama Bailey teaches you techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes—from grits to gumbo.
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