Certain foods come with a particular level of animosity attached, and apple pie is one of those foods.

I love apple pie, but I also understand the mind-numbing process of peeling every single apple each time I shove a forkful into my mouth. It’s one of those old-timey recipes that’s lovable only because you had a grandma who was so hardened from her decades-old shouty marriage that she could put all of her rage into peeling apples and mixing dough. So you get all the flavor and none of the yelling about why Harold couldn’t pay more attention to her after the war.

Here’s what you need:

Crust:

– 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

– 1/2 teaspoon salt

– 1 teaspoon sugar

– 8 tablespoons cold butter

– 1/4 cup ice water

Pie:

– 1/4 cup sugar

– 1/4 cup light brown sugar

– 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

– Pinch nutmeg

– Pinch salt

– 6 apples (usually you want to get a mix of sour and sweet, but for this one you’re gonna want to go all sweet.)

– 1 tablespoon lemon juice

– 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

– 10 strips applewood-smoked bacon

Salted Caramel

– 1 cup sugar

– 1/4 cup water

– 3/4 cup heavy cream

– 3 1/2 tablespoons butter

– 1 teaspoon sea salt

Here’s what you do:

Get a medium pot and stir the water and sugar together until the sugar completely dissolves. Turn up the heat to a boil and keep it bubbling until it’s the color of caramel. This should take about six to seven minutes. Brush the sides with a wet pastry brush while that’s going on to keep the sugar crystals from sticking to the sides, and don’t stir.

Take the pot off heat and slowly whisk in the heavy cream. Stir in the butter and salt until it’s all melted together. After you let it cool, pour your liquid in a container and refrigerate.

To make the crust, start by whisking together the salt, sugar and flour. Get a pastry blender, cut the cold butter into eight slices, and mix it into the dry stuff until it’s roughly the texture of cornmeal. Making sure the butter is cold matters because that’s what keeps your crust from being mushy. Add the ice water in and combine until you get a nice, doughy ball. You might need to add more to get it to all stick together, so keep adding in ice water a little at a time until you’re golden. Press the ball down into a disc, wrap it in plastic wrap, and chill it in the fridge for an hour while you do the rest of the pie. Now’s a good time to take out the caramel sauce and let it warm up, too.

Once the dough’s been chilled, take it out and let it un-chill for a few minutes. Then spread some flour on a flat surface and roll it out with a rolling pin. I could give you the thickness down to the millimeter like most recipes do, but you’re a smart person. Roll the damn thing out until it covers your pie pan.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Get yourself a large bowl and mix together the sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Peel the apples, then slice them using the largest setting on a mandoline slicer. Stir together the apples, lemon juice and cornstarch with the crap that’s already in the bowl. Alternate layers of apples and salted caramel until you’ve filled the pie. You don’t have to be exact, but make sure the caramel is nice and mixed in with the apples.

Take the bacon strips and make a lattice over the top, like in the picture. The bacon is going to fall over the edges of the pie a bit, but don’t trim the edges, since the strips will shrink in the oven. Sprinkle a little more sugar in between the bacon holes, too.

Put the pie on a rimmed baking sheet and stick it in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 degrees and bake for another 50 minutes.

Let the pie cool on a rack until it’s cool enough to eat, and then eat it.

Eat up these beats, too. This week they’re from DIBIA$E, with a track called “Unfortunate:”

http://mrdibiase.bandcamp.com/track/unfortunate-90

Cramp up those hands, grab a handful of apples and hope your fingers don’t get chopped off in the process.