How to Save Your Bland Thanksgiving With Salty Honey Pie

I have strong opinions about food, and they are all correct. So I won’t hold your hand when I tell you that your Thanksgiving meal is bad. 

It’s not your fault. You’re making the food you think you’re supposed to, using the recipes your great-grandmother tore off the back of a can of green beans, and everyone says they always look forward to the food. They are also wrong.

The food is bad. It’s almost all brown. It has zero texture, unless mushy counts as texture. Stuffing is just wet bread — the least appetizing of foods. Any vegetable on the table has been cooked to within an inch of its nutritional usefulness and then cooked some more. It’s a meal celebrated at the end of harvest time that somehow ends up using everything from mushrooms to cranberries out of a can. 

Why have we accepted this sorry state of affairs for so long? If we’re going to be fighting about politics and making awkward chitchat with great-uncles and dotty aunts we see once a year, can’t we at least be doing it over food that’s actually good?

I will admit to my biases before we go any further. I grew up vegetarian in the 1990s before anyone thought that was a normal thing to do. My family was not invited to the various Thanksgiving dinners held by relatives because “What do you feed a vegetarian?” We did our own thing, of course, but the meal was mostly kind of a weird large lunch that lasted for about 15 minutes, after which we were allowed to start decorating for Christmas. 

I am no longer a vegetarian, but I did grow up to be a vegetable farmer who is friends with lots of other farmers. And let me say on behalf of all of them, maybe consider spending some of the (so much!) money you’re spending on this one meal with local farmers.

I have friends who raise turkeys and friends that grow sweet potatoes and friends that have hazelnut orchards, and friends that grow mushrooms, and I guarantee all of it is going to be fresher and higher quality and will taste better than anything you are standing in the checkout line for three hours to buy at Costco. (No shade to Costco, but we can do better on this.)

I said at the beginning that I have strong opinions about food and that they are all correct. But the truth is, everyone’s opinions about food are correct because eating food is an inherently subjective experience. Some people don’t like spicy food (incorrect, in my opinion); some people don’t salt their meat enough (also incorrect); some people serve mashed potatoes that aren’t a 50/50 ratio of potato to sour cream and butter (criminal). So, if you still love your Thanksgiving meal and all the shades of beige it encompasses, great, you are correct in your opinion (just not mine).

This is the part of the column where I’m supposed to give you a recipe to counter the myriad gastronomical sins committed by this meal every year. I could describe a salad with radicchio (color!) and hazelnuts (crunch!) and goat cheese (salt!) and apples (sweet!) and tell you all the ingredients can likely be found at the Proctor Farmers Market the weekend before the holiday. I could let you know that while it’s probably too late for this year, a little preplanning will get you the best turkey you’ve ever eaten from the folks at Tail Feather Farm (Walla Walla) or Hungry Hollow Farm (Shelton) or Bright Ide Acres (Orting). I could tell you to ditch the turkey altogether and have salmon from Slow Boat Fish Co. (Poulsbo) or pork from Wildwood Hollow (Lakebay) because let’s give the turkeys a year to just live, you know? 

But I feel like the only thing that will make you feel better is pie. And no, not pumpkin. And not pecan. And no, apple pie won’t cut it either. 

This pie is so good that the Brooklyn-based Four and Twenty Blackbirds bakery that created it has trademarked the name, and the recipe is asked of me so often I have a special folder in my phone with a photo. 

Here it is, my annual contribution to the Thanksgiving meal — Salty Honey Pie. (And if you’re saying to yourself, hey, that pie looks kind of beige, how dare you? It is golden.)

Salty Honey Pie

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon white cornmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste 
• 3/4 cup honey
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons white vinegar
• 1 to 2 teaspoons flake sea salt, for finishing
• Have ready and frozen one pastry-lined 9-inch pie pan, crimped. Whatever you want to use here is fine.

Procedure

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375.

2. Stir together the melted butter, sugar, cornmeal, salt, and vanilla paste. Stir in the honey and the eggs one at a time, followed by the heavy cream and vinegar.

Place the frozen pie shell on a rimmed baking sheet and strain the filling through a fine-mesh sieve directly into the shell. 

3. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 45 to 50 minutes, rotating 180 degrees when the edges start to set, 30 to 35 minutes into baking. The pie is finished when the edges are set and puffed up high, and the center is no longer liquid but looks set like gelatin and is golden brown on top. 

4. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack, 2 to 3 hours. Sprinkle with flake sea salt. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

For a printable version of this recipe to use for your Thanksgiving dinner click here.