How to Cook a Brit Boy Pie Properly

Every pie we send out is built to be cooked from frozen. That isn’t a shortcut or a compromise — it’s how they’re made, how they’re packed, how they’re shipped overnight, and honestly how they taste best.

The single most common mistake is thawing first. Don’t. Here’s why, and here’s how to get it right.

Straight from the freezer

Take it out, take it out of the packaging, put it in a preheated oven. That’s the whole preparation.

A pie left to defrost on the counter goes soggy at the base before it ever sees heat. The topping absorbs moisture from the filling as it softens, and by the time it’s in the oven you’ve already lost the thing that separates a good pie from a great one. Cooking from frozen means the outside sets before the filling has a chance to soak into it.

It also means you can decide you want a pie forty-five minutes before you want to eat it, which is roughly how that decision gets made in most houses.

Pies

Oven — this is the one we recommend. Preheat to 400°F. Out of the packaging, straight in, 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is properly golden.

Air fryer. Also 400°F, 40 to 45 minutes, same test.

Either way you want an internal temperature of 165°F or above. A cheap probe thermometer is the single most useful thing you can own if you cook a lot of pies. Golden on top is a good sign, but the middle is what matters.

Times vary with equipment. Ovens run hot and cold, air fryers vary enormously between models. Treat these as a starting point — after two pies you’ll know what yours does.

Sausage rolls and pasties

Shorter, because there’s less mass to get heat through.

Oven. 400°F, 25 to 35 minutes, until golden.

Air fryer. 400°F, 25 to 30 minutes.

Same target of 165°F inside. Take the plastic off first — it sounds obvious, but it has been done.

Why we say oven

An air fryer does a perfectly good job, and if it’s what you’ve got, use it. But an oven gives more even heat around the whole pie, and with something an inch and a half thick and frozen solid, even heat matters. Air fryers move a lot of hot air very fast across the surface, which is brilliant for a sausage roll and slightly less ideal for the middle of a full-size pie.

If you’re air-frying a whole pie, check the centre before you serve it.

The microwave question

No.

You can microwave a pie. It will be hot. The topping will also have the texture of a wet paper bag, and you’ll have wasted a perfectly good pie. There is no version of this that ends well.

If you’re short on time the answer is to start the oven earlier, not to change the method.

A few things worth knowing

Don’t cover it. Foil traps steam, and steam is the enemy of a browned top — which on a mash-topped pie is half of what you’re after. If it’s browning faster than you’d like, drop the temperature 25 degrees rather than covering it.

Use a tray. The foil dish catches anything that bubbles over and it’s easier to get out of the oven.

Let it sit five minutes. The filling comes out hotter than you expect, and five minutes lets it settle so it doesn’t run everywhere when you cut in. It also stops you burning your mouth, which is a genuine risk with a proper pie.

Golden means golden. Pale means underdone. Another five minutes and check again — you can’t really overdo it within reason, but you can definitely underdo it.

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That’s it. Preheat, unwrap, 400°F, wait, eat. The hard part was making it, and we’ve already done that bit.

Everything is in the shop in packs of 4, 8 and 12 — collect at one of our Kansas City pickup locations or we’ll ship it frozen anywhere in the fifty states.