The Limiest Key Lime Pie

I love key lime pie. But it has to be really, really limy key lime pie, the type that makes your mouth pucker with the sourness. This is that recipe: tangy, sour, and just sweet enough to complement the lime. So let me be clear: if you don’t like limes, this recipe is not for you. For those of you who do like the limiest of key lime pies, this is the key lime pie for you. Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, this is originally from Joe’s Crab Shack in Miami – where I have never been but very much wish to go. This key lime pie makes you wish that we could all be sitting in the Caribbean watching the sun set over the ocean. 

I’ve chosen to focus on limes for this post. (How could I not? They are the star of the show.) There are two main types of limes sold in the US, both of which can be used for this recipe: Persian limes and key limes. Persian limes are larger, while key limes tend to be smaller, slightly less tart, and contain more seeds. Although the pie is named after the key lime, I tend to use Persian limes for this recipe for one reason and one reason only: Persian limes are easier and faster to juice. But there’s no right or wrong way here, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide which to use. 

The US used to have booming lime industry in southern Florida, but it all but disappeared after the 1990s due to a lot of bad luck: a combination of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and citrus canker in the early 2000s. As a result, the US now imports the overwhelming majority of limes from Mexico. (About 80 percent of limes that grow in the EU came from Spain and Italy, while in 2017 90 percent of imported limes to the EU came from Brazil and Mexico.) 

Mexico is the second-largest producer of limes in the world, producing about 13 percent of the global lime supply. Mexico production is split geographically by type of lime, with Veracruz as the largest producer of Persian limes, and the states of Michoacán and Colima the main producers of key limes. About one-third of Persian limes produced in Mexico are exported to the US; Veracruz exports about 50-60 percent of its Persian lime production.

The US dependence on Mexico – and American’s love of margaritas, guacamole, pho, and everything else that lime makes delicious – paved the way for the great lime shortage of 2014 during which restaurants were often unable to serve cocktails with limes or had to pay exorbitant prices to find them. In 2014, a box of limes increased in price from $40 per box to $139. This shortage was due to an unfortunate alignment of bad weather, disease, and Mexican drug cartels further restricting supply and thus driving up the price. As happened with avocados, cartels became interested in limes as another revenue source and a way “to spread their risk.” Having expanded into industries like avocados and limes, cartels continue to extort – and, in some cases, murder – farmers, a result of an absent government and a power vacuum filled by cartels.

As with so many issues in food supply chains, in this case lime production highlights larger societal challenges. Just as in the avocado industry, boycotting goods produced by extorted farmers hurts the farmers more than the cartels. Cartels can keep diversifying, moving onto other agricultural products and goods. But to be powerful, cartels need one key thing: guns, many of which flow illegally into Mexico from the US. With the US incapable of passing basic gun control laws, just this week the Mexican government sued major US gun manufacturers, including gun giants such as Smith & Wesson and Glock and Colt’s. The Mexican government is asking for financial damages – up to $10 billion – as well as better security features on weapons and more control over gun sales. While the case is unlikely to succeed, it may help to make gun control a bigger issue again, which is really the main goal of this case. And perhaps some day the US will wake up and start to control murderous weapons.