Lemon meringue pie recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to making meringue? ›

Make meringue pie on dry, low-humidity days. Don't overbake your meringue! Overbaking causes the egg whites to shrink and squeeze out small droplets of moisture. Always make sure to check on your pie at the minimum baking time.

The Trick To Making Lemon Pie Filling for Lemon Meringue Pie

You make it with egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and zest, and fortify it with cornstarch so the filling holds its shape when you cut the pie. READ MORE: What happens when the lemon filling fails to set properly? A runny filling, no fun!

The bottom line: For smooth, stiff beaten egg whites that keep their shape, don't skip the cream of tartar. If you don't have cream of tartar, substituting 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar per egg white works almost as well. To avoid meringues that weep, don't skip the cream of tartar...

The importance of cream of tartar

This little ingredient is so important, it deserves its own section here. Cream of tartar is an acid that stabilizes the egg whites and is what gives you those big, beautiful, billowy pillows of fluffy white meringue.

Make sure you're spreading your meringue over a hot — not cooled — pie filling. Otherwise, your meringue will bake on top, but the cooled pie filling won't get hot enough to cook the meringue on its bottom in the short 15 to 20 minutes needed to bake a meringue.

Refrigeration makes meringue weep more quickly, so let the pie stand at room temperature in a draft-free spot before serving it. After a few hours, however, it will need to be refrigerated. ''If the meringue is cooked before being added to the pie, it will be more stable and less likely to weep.

Blind Bake

The most common way to ward off a soggy pie crust is by a process called blind baking. Blind baking means you pre-bake the crust (sometimes covered with parchment or foil and weighed down with pie weights to prevent the crust from bubbling up) so that it sets and crisps up before you add any wet filling.

Water seeping from meringue is practically always coming from the egg whites. There are a few standard things you can do to reduce it. First, do not overbeat. For some reason, recipes love to direct people to beat egg whites "to stiff peaks".

Why does my lemon meringue pie taste like metal? ›

The metallic taste is from the cream of tartar, probably transferred to your lemon curd overnight. Try to make meringue with egg white and sugar, it's enough.

What is a Good Cream of Tartar Substitute when Making Meringues? You can substitute lemon juice for cream of tartar when making meringues. The substitution ratio is 1:2 — for your recipe's measurement of cream of tartar, use double that amount of lemon juice.

Cornstarch: Cornstarch is an excellent way to foolproof your meringue. Use it to create added fluff and keep your hard-won volume from shrinking. Cream of Tartar: Often added in when making meringues, acidic cream of tartar provides lift and stabilization.

Keep in mind that more cream of tartar doesn't necessarily mean a better, more stable result. “Too much cream of tartar will impart a metallic, tin-like taste,” Molly warns.

If your meringue does weep, you can try to absorb some of the moisture by gently blotting it with a paper towel. This works especially well for removing beads of moisture on top of your meringue.

It can take a while for a meringue to reach stiff peaks and for the sugar to dissolve—about five minutes with a hand mixer. If the sugar has not dissolved (for example, if it tastes gritty), keep beating.

Some recipes call for a small amount of cream of tartar or cornstarch, which helps stabilize the meringue and prevent it from deflating.

Slow and steady is the fast and hard rule for any meringue. Start slow when whipping the whites for small and stable bubbles, slowly up the tempo so you don't over beat and then slowly add the sugar. This goes for your oven too. We're not cooking, so much as drying out the meringue.

Over whip the egg whites and you risk making them too firm and they will risk losing the moisture that they hold. This will affect your meringue's crispness, as well as making it more likely to collapse or weep beads of sugar. As my meringue guru Gary Mehigan advises: “If you over whip the egg whites you cannot fix it.