'How Low Can You Go' Winner: Tomato Pie Kathy Lloyd of Pittsfield, Mass., submitted this Tomato Pie recipe in NPR's "How Low Can You Go" family supper challenge. She says it was her favorite dish growing up and she always asked for it for her birthday. The key? Fresh tomatoes and the gooey crust.

'How Low Can You Go' Winner: Tomato Pie

'How Low Can You Go' Winner: Tomato Pie

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/104470854/104473270" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Kathy Lloyd's Tomato Pie Kathy Lloyd hide caption

toggle caption
Kathy Lloyd

Kathy Lloyd's Tomato Pie

Kathy Lloyd

Cook It Yourself

Get the recipe for tomato pie.

Last month, NPR asked professional chefs to submit recipes for a delicious meal for four people that cost less than $10 in the "How Low Can you Go" family supper challenge. NPR also posed the challenge to listeners.

More than 300 people submitted low-priced dishes — everything from pizzas to fish tacos with kimchi to "road kill deer stew."

Kathy Lloyd, from Pittsfield, Mass., submitted the tomato pie, her favorite recipe growing up — and the dish she asked for on her birthday.

To make the pie, Lloyd suggests using the freshest tomatoes and onions you can find.

"It's a summertime recipe. It uses tomatoes fresh from the garden, Vidalia onions," Lloyd tells NPR's Michele Norris. "That's why you generally wait until August, because that's when the Vidalias and the tomatoes are ready."

Lloyd says what really makes the pie is the shredded cheddar cheese and mayonnaise that you put on top before baking.

When it comes out of the oven, "it's a warm, bubbly, cheesy, brown-golden gooey loveliness," Lloyd says.

Tomato Pie


Make 1 biscuit recipe from the Bisquick box

Use as a pie crust and bake it. Place either ceramic baking beads or another pie plate on top of it to keep it from rising out of control.

Layer in the pie crust (really high) the sweet onions sliced pretty thin (generally 1 big one) and the garden fresh tomatoes not too thin (about 2 lbs). Season each layer of tomatoes with salt, fresh cracked pepper and fresh basil.

Make a top crust with 2 cups shredded cheddar and 1 cup mayo. Mix the cheese and mayo with your hands and squish it all over the pie like a top crust.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.

On the crust, I used half goat cheese, half mayo, but you have to have the mayo to make the crust.