Honest answer: it depends on whether you’ll use leftovers. A pie maker is brilliant at turning the end of a stew, a bit of chilli or last night’s mince into two hot, crisp pies. If you were planning to make pastry from scratch and a filling from scratch every time, you’ll probably get bored of it by February.
The one I’d look at is the Salter Double Deep-Fill Pie Maker. It’s simple, well reviewed and does exactly one thing.
How it works
It’s like a waffle maker with two round, deep wells. You line the bottom with pastry, spoon in the filling, lay a pastry lid on top and close it. The lid has a crimp-edge press, so the edges seal into that proper pie-shop frill.
Salter says it preheats in about three and a half minutes and the pies cook in around ten. The plates get up to 190 to 200°C, which is hot enough to brown the pastry on both sides. That’s the big advantage over a pie in the oven, actually: the bottom gets direct heat, so the dreaded soggy bottom is much less of a risk.
What Salter lists
- Makes two pies at once, each 9cm across and deep-fill
- Non-stick cooking plates
- A safety lock latch to keep it shut while it cooks
- Power and ready lights, so you know when to put the pies in
- 900W
Tips if you get one
- Use ready-rolled pastry. Shortcrust for the base, puff for the lid works nicely. Nobody’s checking.
- Cool the filling first. Hot filling melts the pastry before it’s had a chance to set.
- Don’t overfill. Thick, not runny. A wet stew will bubble out of the seam and burn onto the plates.
- Try sweet ones too. Apple and cinnamon, or a spoonful of mincemeat at Christmas, take the same ten minutes.
Where it falls down
Two pies at a time is fine for a couple but slow for a family of five. The pies are a fixed size, so you can’t make one big one. And it’s another plug-in thing that needs a home, which is the real question for most people.
If you mostly want mince pies at Christmas, you’re better off with a decent tin and the oven. Here’s our pick of tins for homemade mince pies.
So, worth it?
For people who batch-cook stews and chillies and hate wasting the last couple of portions, I think it is. It turns leftovers into something that feels like a new meal, and it does it faster than heating the oven. For anyone who’d use it twice and forget about it, skip it.
