Gooseberries can be difficult to find if they aren’t in season. You can buy them in some stores, but mostly they are found growing in woods and meadows in the Midwest. Gooseberries also make a great jam or preserve. Gooseberry pie is a summer favorite in many Amish settlements.
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If you want gooseberry pie and can't find them in stores, this filling is from the Amish-Buggy brand, which you can buy from Amazon. The filling is made and packed by an Amish family in Arthur, Illinois. Okay, my verdict is in. I've had a jar of this pie filling sitting on my counter for weeks and, finally, yesterday was the day. I had to make a gooseberry pie.
I asked my daughter Aster what she thought of gooseberries. She scrunched up her nose "they kind of look like olives" she said. Hmmm, they kind of do, actually. I'm not sure I'd ever tried a gooseberry before. Honestly, I'm not even sure what a gooseberry is. So, if you are like me and are clueless about gooseberries, here is a Wikipedia link.
Good Questions About Gooseberries
In 1911, a federal ban made it illegal to grow all Ribes, including currants and gooseberries, because these plants served as an intermediary host of white pine blister rust. This means in order for the disease to complete its life cycle and infect white pine trees, it must spend some time on a currant, gooseberry or related species. “This federal ban had a big impact on currants and gooseberries in the United States, as basically they didn’t exist for nearly a half century,”
European gooseberry cultivars like Invicta, a white gooseberry with good disease resistance, tend to be larger, sweeter and more robustly flavored. For white currants, Pink Champagne is excellent for a variety of uses, including juices, jams and jellies. Rovada and Red Lake are strong red currant varietals, both in flavor and hardiness, and Consort is a particularly rust-resistant black currant, though it has the potential for poorer fruit quality.
Gooseberries are perennial fruits, making them easy to plant one time and grow back every year. There is even a type of Gooseberry called the Amish Red. Despite gooseberries being banned in multiple states still, growing these fruits actually helps to revive an agricultural and culinary heritage.
Aster and my Mom made the pie yesterday and it turned out well. That said, I can't imagine ever waking up one morning and saying "you know, I'm going to make a gooseberry pie today!" There are just too many other fruit pies that I'd rather have before gooseberry: apple, peach, blueberry, or even some offbeat ones like huckleberry or elderberry. But was the gooseberry bad? No, it was pretty darn good. It just doesn't beat the classics in my opinion.
Gooseberry Pie Ingredients
- 2 homemade or store-bought pie crusts
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups gooseberries or a prepackage can of filling (which in that case you'd probably omit the sugar and flour).
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 Walnut-sized pat of butter
Also don't forget we've got one of the best ever pie crust recipes ever, our Pat a Pan pie crust! We substitute this recipe for all store bought pie crust references!
🥧 Simple Amish Gooseberry Pie Recipe
Here is a recipe from the Amish Cook's editor's archives.
- Preheat the oven to 425° F.
- Roll the pie dough out to a ⅛-inch thickness on a floured surface.
- Fit the dough into a 9-inch pie pan.
- Trim the overhang to 1 inch.
- Fold the dough under and crimp the edges.
- Put sugar, berries, flour, and butter into a bowl to mix.
- Then pour into pie shell and cover with top crust.
- Cover pie with top crust, crimping crusts together all the way around.
- Use some water to wet the rim of the bottom crust, that will help both crusts adhere together.
- Bake 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown
🥧 More Yummy Amish Summer Pie Recipes
Amish Lemon Pie - a staple in the summer. Sweet, sour & simple to make!
Amish Sour Cherry Pie - despite not being a cherry lover, I do love me the tartiness of a classic Amish sour cherry pie!
Summer Amish Tomato Pie - not your traditional fruit pie. But afterall tomatoes are fruits!
Amish Bumbleberry Pie - if you didn't know what gooseberries are, have you ever heard of Bumbleberries?
Sour Cream Apple Pie - what is more All-American than apple pie? Try this delicious Amish recipe for the fourth!
Amish Gooseberry Pie
Ingredients
- 2 homemade or store-bought pie crusts
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups gooseberries
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 Walnut-sized pat of butter
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425° F.
- Roll the pie dough out to a ⅛-inch thickness on a floured surface.
- Fit the dough into a 9-inch pie pan.
- Trim the overhang to 1 inch.
- Fold the dough under and crimp the edges.
- Put sugar, berries, flour, and butter into a bowl to mix.
- Then pour into pie shell and cover with top crust.
- Cover pie with top crust, crimping crusts together all the way around.
- Use some water to wet the rim of the bottom crust, that will help both crusts adhere together.
- Bake 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown
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