Pâté en terrine—also known as pâté and terrine—is a French country cooking dish that can be made with a bunch of specialized equipment or none at all. This equipment flexibility means pâté en terrine can be made by most home chefs without making extra purchases. Today, I’ll talk about the cooking equipment you need, want to have and can do without for making pâté en terrine at home. I’ll also include a list of equipment substitutions you can use.

This guide to pâté en terrine equipment includes:

• Essential equipment: Terrine mold, food processor, tamis, meat thermometer, roasting pan, measuring equipment (including a scale), sharp knife, bowls, utensils.
• Nice to have equipment: Meat grinder, stand mixer with paddle attachment, instant-read or infrared thermometer.
• Substitutions for essential and nice-to-have equipment: Loaf pan, strainer, any pan larger than your terrine, making friends with your butcher.

Let’s get started with a quick refresher on what pâté en terrine is and then get into the equipment you’ll need to take on this tasty project!

What is pâté en terrine?

A pâté is a type of forcemeat made of meat, fat and spices. Pâté en terrine is a pâté that’s cooked in a dish called a terrine. There are four styles of pâté: country pâté, straight pâté, gratin pâté and mousseline pâté. It’s okay to use the terms pâté and terrine interchangeably. [For more on this, see my article, Are Pâtés & Terrines the Same? Mostly Yes: 10 Chefs Tell You Why.]

As an aside, when we hear the word pâté in North America, we tend to think of a spreadable liver paste. To keep things clear in my brain as I learn more about pâté, I tend to call this type of pâté (which is cooked on the stove then put in a dish, rather than cooked in a terrine) liver pâté. (Though I didn’t do this in some of my earlier articles and I hope you’ll forgive this inconsistency.)

Pâté en croute—also known as terrine en croûte—is another member of the pâté family. This pâté/terrine is wrapped in pastry and cooked in a thin metal terrine rather than a heavy terrine.

Now let’s get onto the equipment we’ll need for making a pâté en terrine. You’ll notice that I have a bunch of things listed as ESSENTIAL, but I also give substitutions for them. What? That’s because the thing or process is essential but there are options for the thing or getting the process done, which I include in the substitutions section.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Terrine mold

If you’re making a terrine, you need a dish to cook it in. The showstopper terrine is an enamelled cast iron Le Creuset terrine, which costs more than $200. Terrine molds (for cooking crustless pâtés) are also made of enamelled stoneware, porcelain and silicone. Stoneware and porcelain are mid-range and silicone is low budget.

One upside to buying an enamelled stoneware terrine is that many of them come with a terrine press, which is a flat weight used to weigh down a cooked terrine as it rests in the fridge. If you buy a fancy cast iron terrine, you’ll have to make a press on your own.

You absolutely must have a terrine dish if you plan on cooking your pâté in a dish, of course. However, if you don’t have a proper terrine, you can a loaf pan as a substitution. More on that in the substitution section.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Food processor

For pâtés, you can use a food processor to “grind” your meat and fat if you cut them into small pieces. So that’s a nice-to-have because as I mention further down in the meat grinder section, there are other options for grinding.

However, if you want to make mousselines, straight pâtés and gratin pâtés, a food processor is essential, according to Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman in their book, Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie. They say, “Today, there is really no alternative method to the food processor for those recipes that call for one.”

I love making their chicken liver terrine recipe which is light and airy and reminds me of chocolate mousse (I don’t eat sugar anymore so take this comparison with a grain of salt). I don’t have a food processor, but I use the Magic Bullet to blend it all up. So, while a food processor isn’t required for this recipe, a food-processor-esque piece of equipment is.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Tamis

First of all, before you say this word out loud, think of Tammy Wynette standing by her man, making pâté—then you won’t be tempted to pronounce the S!

A tamis is a fine-meshed strainer, shaped like a tambourine. The mesh can be made of cloth, nylon or metal. The outer part of the tamis can be made of plastic, wood or stainless steel.

You use a tamis to remove lumps or excess liquid.

The straining process is essential for making a mousse or mousseline-style terrine because it creates smooth and light final product. I scoffed the first time I saw this instruction for a liver mousse, but I did it and now I also strain my chicken liver pàté recipes. But not with a tamis; I use one of the substitutions mentioned later on.  

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Meat thermometer

A meat thermometer is a metal tube that’s inserted into your meat to check the temperature. Many pâté recipes give you a temperature guide for doneness, which is more precise than a time estimate.  So, you’ll need a thermometer for that.

A meat thermometer works as well as the quality of your thermometer, but it does leave a hole in your pâté which is why I have some substitution suggestions in that section below.  

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Roasting pan

Pâté en terrines are cooked in the oven but, unlike meatloaf, they get a special water bath treatment. A water bath—also called a bain marie—is when you place your cooking dish, in this case, your terrine, inside a larger dish or pan full of hot water.

The water keeps the intense heat of the oven off the item you’re cooking so your dish can be cooked gently. For terrines, this helps keep the meat-fat emulsion stable (instead of all the fat liquifying and running out of your pâté).

A roasting pan is great for this because it leaves ample room around the edges of your terrine mold. This is important because it makes it easier to put the terrine into the water bath and remove it. On the down side, a large roasting pan full of hot water can be unwieldly so be careful when you move the whole thing.

If you never host turkey dinner, you might not have a proper roasting pan, so I’ve included a couple substitutions in that section.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Measuring equipment, including a scale

Well, measuring equipment is essential for most recipes so this seems a little silly to say. But, for pâtés, a lot of the measurements are in weight so measuring cups won’t suffice. You’ll also need a digital scale to measure the meat and fat that go into your pâté en terrine. And when you go pro at terrines, you may forgo recipes and work with ratios instead, which means you’ll even be weighing your salt.

You won’t use much, if any, flour in your pâté en terrine but let’s look at a flour example to show you the precision benefits of using a scale.

In their excellent book, Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman, they say, “In our experience a cup of flour has weighed as little as 4 ounces/110 grams and as much as 6 ounces/170 grams.” Well that would make a difference in a recipe, wouldn’t it!

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Sharp knife

With pàté en terrine, you’ll need to cut up your meat and fat small enough to go into the meat grinder or food processor and that’s easier to with a sharp knife. Safer too.

In their article, The Three Must-Have Knives, The Food Network says you only really need three knives in your kitchen: a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated knife. Which means you only have three knives to keep sharp. Fortunately, serrated blades stay sharp for a long time which means you really only need to keep two knives sharp.

Options for knife sharpening include having them sharpened professionally, sharpening them manually with a sharpening stone and/or a honing rod or using an electric knife sharpener, which seems the easiest option to me.

However, if you’re making pàté en terrine with ground meat (using the befriend-your-butcher method covered in another section), your need for a truly sharp knife is significantly reduced. You can get away with using dull knives to cut many things. Should you neglect your knives this way? Well, that’s another question indeed.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Bowls

You’ll need bowls to keep your meat mixtures in. With pàtés, it’s important to keep equipment and ingredients cold so use glass or ceramic bowls because they’re better insulators than metal. Meaning a cold glass bowl will stay cold longer than a cold metal bowl.

However, metal bowls are okay if you’re following a recipe that calls for one bowl to be placed in a larger bowl full of ice.

Essential equipment for making pâté en terrine: Utensils

You’ll need utensils like spoons, wooden spoons and a rubber spatula to mix up the pàté ingredients. Oven mitts and a heavy-duty spatula are useful for getting the terrine in and out of the water bath. I have silicone oven gloves (terrible for not transferring heat) and a silicon oven mitt (yes, just one) and because they’re waterproof, they’re quite handy for getting the terrine in and out of the water bath.

Okay, those are the must-haves, now let’s get onto the nice-to-haves … And for full disclosure, at the time of writing this, I don’t own any of these nice to haves. Though I will definitely buy a cheapo food processor and I may just splurge on a fancy thermometer that works in two seconds.  

Nice-to-have equipment for making pâté en terrine: Meat grinder

Meat grinders are for grinding meat and fat and they can be electric or manual. You can also grind meat and fat if you have a grinder attachment for your stand mixer, such as a KitchenAid or Cuisinart.

If you grind slightly frozen meat and fat (many recipes call for this) with your stand mixer attachment, don’t run it for too long at a time as this can burn out the engine. As a general rule, a standalone meat grinder will be more robust than a stand mixer with a meat grinder attachment. Though if you have a KitchenAid made by Hobart (from the olden days), this rule may not apply.

To do pàté en terrine properly, you need a meat grinder and you need to keep all the equipment and ingredients chilled.

Grinding options in order of excellence:

• The best thing to have is a meat grinder.
• The second best thing to have is a stand mixer with a grinder attachment.
• The third best thing to have is a manual grinder that you keep sharp.
• The fourth best thing is to use a food processor to grind your meat and fat.
• The fifth best thing is to use meat that your butcher grinds for you.

Because it’s easy to find pàté recipes that call for ground meat (rather than telling you to grind it yourself), I’m putting the grinder in the nice-to-have category rather than on the essential list. If you ask a pàté chef about this, he or she would probably say a meat grinder is essential.

But we’re beginners here. It’s better to start with what we’ve got than to forgo the experience of making pàté.    

Nice-to-have equipment for making pâté en terrine: Stand mixer with paddle attachment

First of all, these stand mixers do look amazing on your counter. They give you instant credibility as a home cook. Alas, I do not have one.

For pâtés, they’re nice to have because the paddle attachment mixes up the pâté mix and works the meat protein myosin, which acts as a binder, to keep your meat emulsion unbroken. You can do this work by hand, with a wooden spoon, patience and elbow grease.

But not all pâté en terrine recipes call for a stand mixer so if you don’t have one, start with recipes that don’t require it. Or, if you’re not up for working the myosin with your biceps as well as the stand mixer would do, you might want to use a recipe that calls for a secondary binder like flour, bread or eggs. Just to protect your emulsion.

Nice-to-have equipment for making pâté en terrine: Instant-read or infrared thermometer

It’s nice to have a thermometer that’s accurate and quick and easy to use.

An instant-read thermometer gives you a temperature reading instantly. An infrared thermometer lets you take the surface temperature without even touching the food! Both of these are more convenient than a non-instant meat thermometer. With the instant-read thermometer, you still have to puncture your pàté but these needles look slimmer than my old meat thermometer. The infrared is a no-hole situation but for a heftier price.

Personally, I’m putting a Classic Super-Fast® Thermapen® on my shopping list because I really don’t trust my old, crappy meat thermometer and it takes forever to register the temperature. But I also hate shopping, so we’ll see when I get around to this!

So that’s about it for the nice-to-have equipment. Now let’s go have a look at some of the substitutions you can use for the essential and nice-to-have equipment.

Pâté en terrine equipment substitutions: Loaf pan

If you don’t have a beautiful, enamelled terrine mold, don’t despair! If you have an old loaf pan hiding in the back of your cupboard, you’re set to make pâté en terrine!

According to the Joy of Baking website, loaf pans come in three sizes: 8 x 4 x 2.5 inches (4 cups), 8.5 x 4.5 x 2.5 inches (6 cups) and 9 x 5 x 3 inches (8 cups).

These loaf pans are what you’d use to make bread and meatloaf and they’re typically made of glass, stoneware, non-stick bakeware, cast iron and enamelled cast iron.

If you don’t have a loaf pan, you can use a Pyrex dish. Pyrex dishes are made of oven-safe glass—also called borosilicate glass—and come in many shapes and sizes, including rectangular pans. I have a small-ish rectangular Pyrex dish I use as a terrine dish, for now.

And finally, I’ve also made mini terrines in one-cup, wide-mouth mason jars because they are the perfect size for a day or two worth of terrine. (Depending on your recipe, you may be able to freeze the rest.)

Still, it’s natural to want a proper terrine and if that’s what you want, check out my article, 11 Tips for Buying or Procuring Your First Terrine Mold.

Pâté en terrine equipment substitutions: Strainer

If you don’t have a tamis or drum sieve, you can use a regular strainer and it doesn’t need to be fancy at all. For example, I have this fine-meshed colander and a couple very crappy strainers that I use to strain my chicken liver pâté. These aren’t as fine as a tamis but they do the trick. The one with the base isn’t ideal as liver mush gets stuck down there but it’s not bad enough to move me towards shopping for a new one. When I do get a new one, it will be sturdy and shaped like the little guy in the picture below, but maybe 5 or 6 inches across.

Straining pâtés that contain liver is really worth it—and that’s coming from me, who likes to keep things simple. If the straining didn’t make a heavenly result, I’d skip it.

Pâté en terrine equipment substitutions: Any pan larger than your terrine

The pan you use for your water bath should be bigger than your terrine mold, with enough room around the mold so that your gloved hands can move around with ease.

The current terrine situation in my house is a bit ridiculous and needs an upgrade. The pots I own are only slightly larger than my current small Pyrex loaf pan. I didn’t realize this was a problem until I had to remove the loaf pan from the pot. Very tricky because I also don’t have a heavy-duty spatula that I could use to lift it out. The system works okay when I use small round Pyrex containers and one-cup, wide-mouth mason jars.

The other issue if you have a too-small pan is splashing due to the awkwardness. Imagine my horror when I accidentally splashed hot water onto the top of my mousse-like pâté. I absorbed it with some paper towels, and it all worked out, but still.

I recommend testing out how your terrine mold fits into the pot you use for the water bath. If you can get the terrine mold in and out easily, that’s great.

And, though I’m generally a fan of “doing what you can with what you’ve got,” life is too short to put up with a water bath that’s too small for your terrine mold.

Pâté en terrine equipment substitutions: Making friends with your butcher

If you don’t have any equipment to grind meat and fat for your pâté en terrine, then it’s time to make friends with your butcher. Your butcher should have ground meat on hand and will probably be willing to grind whatever you request, so long as you buy it from their shop.

And if you use ground meat at first, then look for and use recipes that call for ground meat instead of modifying recipes that suggest grinding your own meat and fat.

If you have out-of-the-ordinary special requests for your butcher, consider calling ahead to make your request and don’t make special requests during peak hours. Your butcher will be more than happy to tell you his or her preferred process for special orders and requests.

Conclusion

Okay, folks, you can make pàté en terrine even if you don’t have the best—or even the proper—equipment. Don’t let a lack of equipment stop you from making delicious and nutritious pàté! And, of course, you can upgrade your equipment when you’re ready. May your pàté be beautiful and yummy always!