Improvising Pie Weights

When you have to blind-bake a pie crust (or any crust) don’t spend money on fancy pie weights. Use dry beans or rice or legumes or grains of any kind. You’ll probably need 3 to 4 cups. I have been using the same giant jar of dried beans, etc., for at least 30 years. They go into the foil-lined crust, and afterward they cool off and go back into the jar. My mix of ‘pie weights’ has a variety of dried beans, split peas, lentils, arborio rice, wheat kernels, and other grains. I just keep adding to the jar, and really, having different sizes in the mixture means that it settles or nestles in more efficiently than a bunch of marble-size rounds.