Does anyone know why when I cut into my lemon meringue pie it was watery? I used Martha Stewart's recipe and thought it would have been fool proof. Any suggestions on correcting this problem would be appreciated.

Did you let the lemon filling cool completely before covering with meringue? Did the meringue cover completely to the crusts edge all the way around the pie shell?

Alton Brown says in Good Eats "I Pie" episode that overcooking the lemon filling will cause it to become watery.

Mark

Gosh Flowerpot, don't depend on everything Martha does as being foolproof. If it was, she wouldn't have spent all that time in jail.

Seriously, I have never made lemon pie with anything but a box pudding mix except when I owned a cafe and then we used canned filling. I make all my other pies from scratch, but not lemon. Mark seemed to have the answer.

Diane

I was actually watching martha the other day and someone in the audiance actually asked her about this. She says that there is really no way around it, but adding a little extra sugar to the meringue, or even making a cooked meringue can help.
Good luck
Ash

My last reply was off the top of my head, and as usual when I do things like that, I got it wrong. Upon review of the episode I quoted, AB says watery lemon filling is due to UNDERcooking the filling. If you want to get an education on lemon meringue pie, here is a link to a transcript from that episode http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season7/Pie/i_pie_trans.htm

probably way more info than you would really want, but I just love Alton Brown.

Mark

Thanks Mark. That was really informative. I do use lard for my crust but never butter and lard. Will have to try it next time I get the urge to make pies.

I love CC. It's not just about cake..........

Diane

Thanks so much for all your replies. I'm not giving up on this recipe because it was the best tasting I've ever had--even my company wanted the recipe but I don't want to share it till I can figure out how to have a nice filling with no water in it. Perhaps I did cook it too long. I'll try again for sure.

Have a nice day !

Flower

Because of the difficulty of cooking lemon meringue pie filling to the precise temperature required in order not to become liquid, I've switched to a lemon curd filling. I use Ina Garten's filling for Lemon Meringue Tart. Yum, yum, y'all. Try it. You will thank me later.

(scroll down to lemon filling)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32264,00.html

I have this problem about 75% of the time and I've tried everything I can think of to get the cooking timing right. I've used all different kinds of box filling and made my own as well. Last time I used canned....didn't like the way it tasted at all!