Make room for these pies on your Thanksgiving table

If Thanksgiving for you means an expensive, elaborate, pull-out-all-the-stops meal, have no fear: you can still fulfill your dreams with a single pie. May we present Beef Wellington Pot Pie, that most luxurious of dishes in pie form.

Instead of beef tenderloin, use short ribs, which have the dual advantage of being both cheaper and more tender. You can use morels if you like, but feel free to substitute whatever mushrooms you can find. Pate can be store bought. But you must make your own puff pastry for the top. The “rough puff” dough included in this recipe is doable, and in the end, you will feel quite proud of yourself. Find the recipe here.

There’s always someone at the table who is going to eat way more than their share, and there’s someone else who is going to police every single slice and argue about who got the biggest piece. In cases like these, it’s best to make sure everyone has their own individual pie. The other great thing about this 30-Minute Personal Shepherd’s Pie is, as its name implies, it can be made in half an hour. If you don’t like the taste of lamb, you can use beef instead, but in that case, it would be a cottage pie, and that’s worth remembering if you have someone at the table who likes to be annoying about stuff like that. Here’s the recipe.

It’s traditional on Thanksgiving to eat “American” food: the turkey, cranberries, corn, and pumpkin eaten by the New Englanders who invented Thanksgiving as we know it. They declared this canon, and we blindly follow their lead. But why does it have to be that way? We are a nation of immigrants and all the better for it. I mean, which would you rather have, chicken parm or turkey? In Chicken Parm Pot Pie, chicken, sauce, and cheese are baked together in a breadcrumb crust that’s topped by a round of pizza dough that’s been brushed with garlic butter. You might as well serve a Thanksgiving dinner that everyone will love, not merely tolerate. Here’s the recipe.

Lemon is not, it’s true, one of the traditional flavors of Thanksgiving. But Trader Joe’s, that arbiter of seasonality, starts putting out its lemon curd around this time of year, so who are we to say Thanksgiving is an inappropriate occasion for a Lemon Cream Tart? Adapted from Tartine Bakery, this recipe is light and easy and refreshing. You can buy a premade crust if you want. You can buy the lemon curd, too. But whatever you do, take a few extra minutes to whip the cream yourself. Cool Whip has its place, but not in this dessert. Here’s the recipe

Also known as Pastel de Nata, Portuguese Egg Tarts are petite and perfect, and one especially nice thing about them is that you can make a whole bunch for Thanksgiving and then hide a few away for your own private consumption later on and no one will ever know! Yes, they use laminated dough, but our recipe walks you through the process of making it. You will have tarts with flaky crusts, and you will eat them all weekend long. Here’s the recipe.

We get it. Some people are just not bakers. That’s fine. Nobody’s saying you have to spend all day in the kitchen slaving over apple pie for dessert if it doesn’t bring you joy. But if you can tolerate an extra 15 minutes, it may be worth trying this Swedish Apple Pie. The brilliance of this recipe is that it requires no pesky scraping or rolling of pastry. Instead you chop up the apples, dust them with sugar, toss them in a pie plate, and cover them with a batter that forms the top crust. Former Takeout staffer Gwen Ihnat claims she made this for her children for breakfast on a weekday. You can read the recipe here.

There are some of us who are able to amaze and impress guests with the imagination and skill of their cooking. And then there are the rest of us who do our best to follow recipes as written, but somehow lack the magic touch. But if you want to pretend you’re capable of kitchen magic, there are always tricks, and one of them is Mock Apple Pie. You—yes, you—are capable of making Ritz crackers taste like apples with basic ingredients and equipment you probably already have in your very own kitchen. The recipe used to be available on boxes of Ritz everywhere, but for maximum convenience, we’ve reprinted it here.

There are few cooks more daring than Southern grannies who were apparently born knowing how to manage lard and deep frying. For those of us who grew up north of the Mason-Dixon line without Southern grannies, our only exposure to deep-fried pies was the Hostess version. Now, however, a Southern granny has shared her recipe: Granny’s Fried Mostess Pies. They are small and dainty so you can eat them in moderation, which we’re absolutely sure you will. Here’s the recipe.

There are some people who, as a matter of principle, refuse to eat fruit-based desserts. And there are some who, when given a choice, will always go for chocolate. So for these people, we give you this sublime Chocolate Custard Pie, devised by Bo Durham, pastry chef at Mindy’s HotChocolate Bakery in Chicago. The crust is crumbly and buttery and the filling isn’t too sweet. You can find the recipe here.

Who needs a drink? Maybe it’s time for an Apple Whiskey Pandowdy. Okay, it’s true that most of the actual alcohol will burn off during baking, but you’ll still get the flavor of hard cider and applejack, should you decided to use them. (This recipe also works with sweet cider.) Apple pandowdy, once the subject of a Dinah Shore song, is an old-timey classic American dessert that’s similar to pie except that it’s made with dried apples and has just a top crust that’s submerged into the juice of the filling during baking. Find the recipe here.

The Takeout is here for you. Lots of people avoid pie out of fear. Dough is sticky. If you screw up, you could end up with a dreaded soggy bottom. There may be tears. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s a list of common pie problems and the best way to solve each one. From lattice crusts to filling overflow to the best fat to use in your crust, we’ve got you covered.