Gear Heads | The Best Pie Weights for Perfect Pie Crusts

Many of our pie recipes call for blind baking—baking the crust either partially or completely before adding the filling. But without a filling to hold the raw dough in place, the bottom can puff up or the sides can slump as it bakes, resulting in ugly, misshapen pies. To prevent this, the test kitchen uses pie weights.

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[mpuppet]

I've been using the same bag of pinto beans as pie weights for about 10 years. Screw buying pie weights.

[barbarapearson]

Or you could buy a bag of beans for about a buck and use them for years if you wanted to. Easy, peasy and cheap.

[jamesdooling]

My family used to own a factory. One of the traditional gifts for any new bride marrying in was a huge wooden box full of stainless steel ball bearings collected from a machinery to be used as pie weights.

[KarenSchumacher]

I use the 'filled foil' method, but my fill is sugar. Just plain granulated sugar. Will go through 2 or 3 uses before it's the caramel color I use for baking cookies. Beans can't later be used for cooking, pennies are a pain to keep track of and can often heat with an odor. Pie weights cost money I don't want to spend. I always have sugar on hand, and it can always be used for something else.

[berighteous]

Literally EVERY book that has pie recipes for two hundred years suggests using beans. You can reuse the beans a thousand times.

[PecanPie]

You didn't test the beans or Penny's test for a significantly cheaper better option.

[ChatBot]

Beans all day. Anyone that spends $100 on pie weights doesn't deserve money. 😲😆

[Mlxf]

Should they have used multiple chains to fill up the pie like they did with the other options?

[borderlineiq]

Even Martha Stewart tells us to use beans. Promoting expensive pie weights isn't cool. It also take a lot more energy to make pie weights than it does to simply grow rice or beans, so your solutions are not green friendly either.

[Paelorian]

The best suggestions I've gathered from the comments here and from thinking about it are small cheap pieces of stainless steel or aluminum (being lighter than steel) that you can easily buy in bulk like balls or nuts, dry rice or beans dedicated for the purpose, gravel or small rocks (you could pick it off the ground or get a small bag used for fish tanks at the pet store), marbles if you can find food-safe ones (those toy marbles from overseas may have lead or other contaminants in them), an appropriate sand, cheap clay balls that you can buy or make yourself if you have access to a kiln, and my favorite: sugar.


I'm sure the $24 ceramic weights are fine but I think I'd rather spend $2 on a bag of beans or rice or a block of clay, or else upgrade to a bag of indestructible stainless steel which would still probably cost less than commercial loose pie weights if you're buying a few pounds of the right stuff. You may be able to get clay or gravel for free off the ground.

But I won't knock the ceramic pie weights ATK picked. They're prettier than the improvised alternatives and someone who bakes a lot may really enjoy having them. They seem like they could be a nice gift item to upgrade a frugal friend from the jar of old beans they've been using for the last decade. At $24 for the set of four that ATK recommends, it's not an extravagant purchase. It's just that we know the extra cost is for aesthetics, not an increase in baking performance. But the way the things we interact with look and feel is a real concern and it's often worth it to spend a little extra money to have finer things even if they don't do more than look better. We may enjoy them more.

I know there are many bakers who would rather feel like they have professional equipment rather than something they improvised like a jar of beans or a bag of steel nuts from the hardware store, even if they work just as well. I may be too frugal to buy something as luxuriously unnecessary as commercial pie weights for myself, but if I baked pies regularly I'd appreciate good ones as a gift and would enjoy using them instead of any improvised alternative. Unless I start using more toasted sugar...

[lowreedman]

Go to hardware store and pick up a couple of pounds of stainless nuts. use with the aluminum. use them basically cheap.

[lennart]

You know you can buy ceramic and steel balls by the pound.

[janehall]

I used rice and kept it in a tub to reuse. Line the shell with parchment for easy removal. Shame on ATK for not offering an affordable alternative.

[sms]

Sorry, but this is bull, you use 4 packages of the ceramic beads. Meanwhile you used only one chain. Obviously if you need to use that many ceramic beads you need to at least attempt an equal proportion of chain. Also why didn't you just prick the bottom and sides of the pie shell and bake that for a control.

[grannysweet]

I love this host and all her reviews. However if your going to explore a $100 aluminium option you should have provided the other end option, like dry beans or ? And grearheads love our toys but whos got time/ space for lots of little pieces that will need cleaning. 2 piece pie plate, normal size pie plate with perforated dark metal inset pie plate. Perfect crust every time. $7 @ mallwort more than a dozen years ago. Surely someone is still making that product. Lovely crusts ladies, great hosts. Lousy corporate friendly guide lines, How about some real hacks? Does the job and maybe some others as well, healthy, well made, cheap, easy to clean/maintain, beautiful. Your comparisons are shallow but at least we got to see and hear you and not that bossy cow thats usually on. I wish they would fund you to do real tool hacks. Corporate funding makes for limited truth, is thats whats happening here?

[ohmy]

...I’ll keep using dry kidney beans!👌🏻👌🏻

[gingerginger]

this is where you lose credibility....buy pie weights, just use beans like countless people here will comment about. please do a review for the best " moss covered 3 handled family credenza"

[bl]

if all else fails, make pie crust chips and pie filling dip.

[michaelshane]

How come foil was used instead of parchment paper as a liner?

[jodiealamode]

Dried beans or rice is the way to go; every pastry chef uses them. Even when they get too burned to use anymore, it's just a couple of bucks to replace.