Sweet Green Tomato Pie Recipe

The words "sweet" and "green tomato" wouldn't seem to go together very well, but when combined with a few other ingredients it makes a very delicious pie, and it's a great way to use of the inevitable end-of-the-season green tomatoes.

The recipe was emailed to me from a friend and comes from a site called pallensmith.com. His website says he got the Green Tomato Pie recipe from an 87-year-old woman from Kentucky who has been making the pie every year since the 1950s. It was a bit lacking in details so I've added a few notes.

The recipe was easy enough with the exception of needing to stir the filling constantly for about 6 minutes once the cornstarch was added (Step 3), and even that wasn't very difficult. The green tomatoes need to be peeled, but it's very similar to peeling an apple and since there were only about 10 tomatoes to peel it didn't take long. The recipe calls for four cups of tomatoes, which was about ten medium-sized tomatoes. The tomatoes shown in the image below are "Glacier" tomatoes and range in weight from three to five ounces.


green tomato pie tomatoes

We used a Pillsbury refrigerated pie-dough crust which worked fine. The recipe didn't say whether to blind-bake the pie shell or not so the empty shell was put on a baking sheet while the oven was preheating which kind of split the difference between baked and not baked. Next time I'll blind-bake the shell and cover the edges of the crust with foil once the filling is added. The image below shows the cooked green tomatoes ready to be poured into the pie shell.


sweet green tomato pie filling

The filling doesn't look very appetizing when it's ready to be poured into the pie shell, but the pie smelled and looked awesome when it was removed from the oven. The pie was left to cool for an hour but it was still too wet to slice and ended up needing another couple of hours to firm up. The image below shows a slice of the green tomato pie.

Slice of sweet green tomato pie

The pie was a tad sweet for us so we'll cut the suger to one cup next time, but a small glug of half and half helped to cut the sweetness. We're looking forward to next year's green tomato harvest so we can try making the pie again.

Sweet Green Tomato Pie Recipe


Ingredients:
  • 4 cups green tomatoes, sliced
  • 4 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 2 tsp. lemon zest
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 4 tbsp. cornstarch
  • 4 tbsp. butter
  • 1 double pie crust

  1. Begin by washing, peeling and thinly slicing the tomatoes.
  2. In a medium to large sized sauce pan combine tomatoes, lemon juice, lemon rind, salt, and cinnamon. Cook these ingredients over a medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring often to evenly cook the tomatoes.
  3. Combine the sugar and the cornstarch in a small bowl. Add this to the tomatoes and continue to cook until the mixture thickens, about 5 to 8 minutes. It is important to stir this constantly while cooking to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
  4. Remove the tomatoes from the stove top, stir in the butter until it melts and then allow the mixture to cool slightly.
  5. Pour the filling into a 9 inch pie pan lined with a crust.
  6. Now add the top crust. Evelyn prefers strips, but you can use a solid top crust as well. If you do, just remember to make a few slits in the crust for ventilation with a knife.
  7. Bake the pie in a preheated 400 degree F oven for about 25 minutes.