Martha Stewart and Ina Garten Make Legendary Apple Pies, But Which Tastes Better? Here’s Your Side-by-Side Review

Both are pretty classic apple pie recipes, recommending Granny Smith apples for the base (though Martha also suggests Empire, which are slightly less tart), tossing them in a slurry made of flour, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon. Stewart adds butter to the apple mixture, whereas Garten gussies hers up with some nutmeg, allspice, orange juice and orange and lemon zest.

They also encourage you to make your pie crust from scratch, with very similar dough recipes. Stewart opts for a classic, butter-based pâte brisée; Garten makes her dough a bit more elastic and easier to roll, thanks to the addition of vegetable shortening along with butter. (I used Chosen Foods Avocado Oil Shortening and Plugra butter; the former because it doesn’t contain hydrogenated oils, and the latter because its higher fat content makes pie dough easier to roll out without cracking.)

Stewart doesn’t pull punches when it comes to her mile-high pie—she calls for a whopping 5 ½ pounds of apples, which amounts to about 14 or 15 apples total. You then peel and core them, cutting them into quarter-inch slices and sprinkling lemon juice on them.

From there, you toss them in a combination of flour, sugar and cinnamon. I placed one pie crust onto the pie plate, then mounded the apples on top. I had to arrange them Jenga-style so slices wouldn’t tumble off the top of the pie, but eventually, I got them all on, and carefully studded it with bits of cold butter, as Stewart instructed.

Things got a bit dicey as I fought to get my pie crust topper thin enough to cover the mountain of fruit; as a result, my crust’s crimping turned out, ahem, rustic. Very rustic. Like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood made it as he tried to convince Red his claws really weren’t so big.

Still, a little egg wash and some sanding sugar distracted from my awkward edges, and barely 10 minutes into the hour-and-a-half-long cook time, my family emerged from the living room, commenting on how great the house smelled.

Stewart suggests putting the pie plate on a baking sheet—do it. I forgot this step, only to have to pause 45 minutes in and frantically add one while scraping bubbling, overflowing apple pie juices from the bottom of my oven.

She also implores you to let the pie cool completely before cutting it, “so the juices have time to thicken,” she says. With a pie this thick, that’s over an hour of waiting! For presentation, it’s worth it, but if you prefer a warm slice of pie, you’ll want to dig in early.

If you want a very classically flavored, cinnamon-forward, sweet-tart pie, Martha’s is it. My husband thought it tasted more like baked apples and was a bit on the drier side, but that’s largely due to its mile-high nature. (If your favorite part of a pie is the crust, you may want to avoid deep dish styles altogether.)

The pie’s towering nature makes it impressive to serve, and of the two, it’s the easier pie to make (though it does require 1 ½ pounds more apples, so budget in plenty of time to peel—or enlist a friend’s help!). That said, the presentation comes at a cost, making it a good pairing with ice cream, since it is a drier pie. (Stewart recommends serving it this way when she shared the recipe with Parade.)

Requiring just 4 pounds of apples, Garten’s pie felt like a lower lift—at first. But the prep time evens out, once you start measuring out the other spices and zesting the orange and lemon. The Contessa’s recipe is ideal for beginners and non-bakers, though, because she walks you through every step with such detail that there’s no second-guessing what things should look like at any step, which is nice.

I once heard that she watches her assistants prepare recipes, so she can see how someone else would make the dish, tweaking her instructions accordingly. I got that sense immediately—particularly when my pie crust was a bit too small and I was tempted to stretch the edges along the plate, only to read her next line: “Don’t stretch the dough; if it’s too small, just put it back on the board and re-roll it.” Fine, Ina. Because you said so. (And she was right—it was worth the extra effort, as I had a much easier time crimping.)

Like Stewart, once the apples are peeled, cored and sliced, you toss them in her fancier flour-sugar-seasoning mixture, mound them on a crust-covered pie plate, top with the other crust, cut slits for steam to escape, egg wash, sprinkle with coarse sugar and bake.

While Martha advocates baking at 450 degrees for the first 15 minutes, then reducing to 350 for the remainder, Garten sticks with 400 degrees for the full hour-to-hour-and-15-minute cook time and recommends serving it warm.

And so I did, but perhaps I should’ve let it cool (and the juices solidify a bit more) before slicing into it. Or maybe my apple slices were a bit too thin. Either way, most of the apples had disintegrated into mush, creating a delightfully aromatic, chunky applesauce.

It was a surprising result, but more surprising, honestly, was how much the single tablespoon of orange juice and orange zest dominated the pie. It really competed with the sweet-tart flavor of the apples, creating a more complex, layered dish. However, if you’re not particularly fond of orange—or prefer a more classic apples-and-cinnamon vibe—this style may not be for you. Next time, I’ll cut the apples a bit thicker, just so they’re less likely to break down while baking.

What was fascinating was how two recipes that seemed—on the outset—fairly similar in ingredients and technique could yield such different consistencies and results. Martha’s pie is a great pick for classic apple pie lovers, particularly when served a la mode; Garten’s is great for more avant garde bakers who want to mix things up. Both had flaky, buttery crusts; Garten’s was easier to work with, but both turned out delightful.

If I had to crown one pie the winner, however, it’d be…Grandma Ople. Plot twist! Sorry, Ina and Martha—your pies are good, but the best apple pie I’ve ever made in my 10+ years as a food editor comes from the mysterious AllRecipes contributor. She calls for making a basic caramel sauce that you pour over a lattice-topped pie full of naked, peeled and sliced apples, baking to bubbly perfection. If that sounds too sweet for you, consider your family’s tastes and choose Martha for a classic flavor, and Ina if you find traditional pie too bland.