The first Cherokee Purple came off the vine Sunday morning, the day after we got home from Louisville, and Nora took eleven pictures of it on my old phone before I was allowed to cut it.
Cherokee Purples are not pretty. They're a dusky red-brown with green shoulders, they crack across the top after a hard rain, and they taste the way tomatoes tasted when you were nine. We have three plants in the cedar beds this year, and by Thursday there were enough on the windowsill for the thing I wait all summer to make.
Granny June's tomato pie card is short, even for her: "Good crust, bake it first. Salt the tomatoes. Cheese and Duke's on top. Don't cut it hot." Every line of that matters.
Soggy is a choice you make early
Every soggy tomato pie I've ever eaten went wrong in the first twenty minutes, long before it saw the oven. There are two decisions: whether you salt the tomatoes and whether you bake the crust first.
Salt is the one I explain to anybody who'll stand still. When you salt a cut tomato, the salt on the surface pulls water out of the cells, the same reason a salted cucumber goes limp. Give it time on a rack and a lot of liquid leaves before it ever gets near your crust. This week, two and a half pounds of sliced Cherokee Purples gave up almost half a cup of pink water in 45 minutes.
Baking the crust first matters just as much. A raw crust under wet filling never browns. It steams, and you get something pale and damp that sticks to the pie plate. Bake it empty until the bottom looks dry, then scatter a little cheese on the warm crust, where it melts into a seal.
I know all this because my first tomato pie, years ago, skipped both steps and used tired grocery store tomatoes. Ryan ate a slice with a spoon and said, "It's real good soup." I have never forgotten it.
Ingredients
- 1 deep-dish 9-inch pie crust, homemade or refrigerated, chilled
- 2 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes (3 or 4 large Cherokee Purples), sliced 1/4 inch thick
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3 green onions, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup torn fresh basil
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 6 ounces sharp cheddar, grated (about 1 1/2 cups), divided
- 1/2 cup grated mozzarella
- 1/2 cup Duke's mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
How I make it
- Lay the tomato slices on a wire rack set over a sheet pan, sprinkle both sides with the salt and leave them 45 minutes to an hour. Blot the tops with paper towels before you use them.
- While they drain, heat the oven to 400°F. Line the crust with foil, fill it with dried beans or pie weights and bake 15 minutes. Lift out the foil and weights and bake 8 to 10 minutes more, until the bottom looks dry and lightly golden. Turn the oven down to 350°F.
- Scatter a small handful of the cheddar over the bottom of the warm crust.
- Layer in the tomatoes with the green onions, basil and pepper, two or three layers, ending with tomatoes.
- Stir the rest of the cheddar, the mozzarella and the Duke's into a thick paste. Spread it over the top all the way to the crust so it seals the edge, then sprinkle on the Parmesan.
- Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until the topping is browned in spots and bubbling at the edge. If the crust browns too fast, cover the rim with a strip of foil.
- Let it rest at least 30 minutes, an hour if you can stand it. Cut hot, it slides apart.
You can blind-bake the crust the night before and keep it covered on the counter, which turns this into a doable weeknight dinner. Any meaty slicing tomato works, and Romas are fine in a pinch if you pack in a few extra. Leftovers keep two days in the fridge and reheat at 350°F in about 15 minutes. It doesn't freeze, so don't try.
With tomatoes from the backyard, the pie cost about $6 in crust, cheese and mayonnaise; with farmers market tomatoes at $3 a pound it would be closer to $13. Jack gave it a six ("too much tomato"), and Nora had two slices and asked if there would be another one this weekend. My card behind Granny's says "July 2025: rack, not colander. Cheese on the bottom too."
