Serious Entertaining: An All-Pie Menu for Pi Day

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Updated August 10, 2018

A whole baked, two-crust pie. — J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

March 14th is International Pi Day, though if math were truly a universal language as they say it is, we'd be better off calling it Universal Pi Day. You know what else speaks to everyone across cultures, borders, and even species? Pies. Nobody doesn't love pie. At least, nobody worth inviting to your next dinner party.

In the spirit of International Pi Day, we offer you an entire, soup-to-nuts, all-pie feast.

The Basic Recipe

Our basic pie dough recipe uses the neat trick of incorporating half the flour into a near paste before pulsing in the rest of the flour to create a dough that's easily roll-able and malleable, yet bakes up tender and flaky every time.

Easy Pie Dough »

Appetizer: Frito Pies

The classic Frito pie is as simple as adding chili and cheese sauce to a bag of Fritos. We upgrade the classic in two versions. One with spicy kimchi, and one made with an entirely vegan bean chili along with some pickled red onions and avocado.

Main Course: Meat Pie

I grew up eating a frozen Swanson's chicken pot pie for lunch every Saturday* and they'll always have a special place in my heart (or gut). But the real deal is so much better. Here are recipes for savory pies to suit all tastes.

*On the days when my dad wasn't trying to make tuna melts or hack frozen steaks apart with a knife. I'll never forget the time he said, "Ken, we're having steak for lunch. Go get me the hammer."

Meat pie not for you? Try a savory tart or quiche (they totally still count).

Side Dishes

Side dish pies? Wut? Yep, we went there a couple years ago when we made Ed's All-Pie Thanksgiving Fantasy into a reality. To this day, our Stuffing Pie recipe remains one of the most popular pies on the site, though for the sake of humanity, I hope it's mostly for voyeuristic reasons. We eat stuffing pies and take photos of it so you don't have to, folks.

Green Bean Casserole Pie, on the other hand, deserves a prominent place in our culinary lexicon. Now if only someone would make a decent salad pie.

Dessert

Salted Chocolate Pecan Pie in a glass pie dish resting on some cork trivets. — Lauren Weisenthal

Oh my, we've got more dessert pie recipes on the site than I can possible fathom. Just look 'em up. Seriously. That list goes on a LONG time. For something a bit more compact, you can peruse our top five American classics, but for the sake of our party, we'll stick with just three of our all-time favorite pies, along with two pie-flavored ice creams. Assuming that pie ice cream (p'ice cream?) counts for .070795...of a pie, well, then we have a perfectly even pi number of dessert pie recipes. At least, as even as pi can be (which is not very).

Pies