What?
The Hairy Bikers twin deep-fill pie maker (£19.99, robertdyas.co.uk) is an electrically heated ceramic press, used to seal and cook pastry hulls.
Why?
Who ate all the pies? You did: they were designed for one. Sweet legitimacy.
Well?
It’s ironic I’m reviewing an individual pie maker from the Hairy Bikers, because due to social anxiety, I can’t really handle bars. I SAID I CAN’T HAN–forget it. You want to know more about the gadget. It’s a deep-fill, twin machine, which makes sense, since the TV cooks are a twin machine themselves. Unless Deep Phil is one of their mates, a hog-bound philosopher who reads Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and communes with the duende on the Andalucian trails? (I checked the spelling; it’s deep-fill. Stand down, everyone.)
Let’s open her up and see what she can do. I preheat the machine, use the provided pastry section to cut a disc – fluted for flexibility – that lines the ceramic interior. I add precooked filling. Flipping the cutter produces a smaller disc, to lid the pie. All my life, people have asked me to shut my pie hole, so now I do, clip-locking the clamshell.
There are no temperature or time dials, no app-enabled extra content. You don’t apply egg wash via Bluetooth. It’s basically a sandwich toaster for pies, which I find refreshing.
It’s not perfect – the concave lid means the pastry tops brown at a completely different rate to the rest. The biggest problem is how to plate the things. “Use a spoon”, advises the leaflet, but the device’s walls are deep and the pie is sunk snug to them, with fragile sides. You can’t extract it with a spoon any more than you could re-pot a plant with chopsticks.
Eventually, I tip it out, trying not to maim myself on hot ceramic. I have to say, it’s a fine figure of a dish. Is there anything more comforting than a pie of one’s own? No. I tried wet chicken in gravy, then a crumbly stuffing, with both fillings retained faultlessly. I don’t even mind their non-artisanal appearance. In an age of individualism, the cookie-cutter mentality is strangely welcome. Deep Phil say: don’t be anxious; we’re all one, dude.
Any downside?
You can only cut one pie per sheet of shop-bought shortcrust, which is wasteful. I could make my own pastry, but no one likes those people.
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?
Counter? Yamahavin’ a laugh. 3.14/5
This article contains affiliate links to products. Our journalism is independent and is never written to promote these products although we may earn a small commission if a reader makes a purchase.
