How to Cover a Pot Pie Crust for Perfect Baking

Instructions for baking a pot pie usually recommend covering the edge of the crust with cooking foil. This sounds easy, but the normal method of tearing off a strip and trying to wrap it around a round pie does not work well.

Even a small pot pie will require at least two strips, and the flat strips do not bend around the circumference of a circular shape.

Here are the instructions for how to do it better. This technique will take only a little more time than the rough-and-ready method, and the results are perfect!

Here is my pot pie, wrapped with foil and ready for baking:

Step 1 Read the Directions

Directions for baking a pot pie usually recommend that you wrap the crust edge with a strip of aluminum foil. I will show you a good method of doing this.

Wrapping the crust edge is recommended for all kinds of pies: fruit pies and meat pies, frozen and fresh, homemade and store-bought.

Without wrapping the crust, the edges will likely burn if you try to bake the pie until the center crust is browned. The crust edge is thinner and easily burns. If you shorten the recommended time for baking, the crust edge may brown just fine, but the center crust will be underdone.

This issue is even more important for meat pies. Meat must reach a certain internal temperature to ensure that it is fully cooked...any thing less increases the chance of ingesting parasites or harmful bacteria. To reach the recommended internal temperature requires baking the full amount of time at the proper oven temperature. This will likely burn the crust edges unless you cover them with foil.