This is one of those questions you can actually answer using endgame tablebases like http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html
Put the pawns and kings on the board and try it.
I tried a half a dozen positions and it seemed like the rule of thumb was to try to herd the king to the side with your own king.
Here's something I've wondered a long time, and I never took the time out to analyze it, so the quick way is to just ask...
If you're in an endgame and you have two pawns and there are no other pawns or pieces on the board other than the kings, is it faster to queen one pawn and mate with K + Q, or faster to queen both pawns and mate with Q + Q? I'm sure it makes a difference how close the pawns are to queening, and maybe where the opponent king is, but assuming the opponent king runs to the center of the board at the time you queen one pawn, is there a rough way to estimate for whether it's worth the time march the second pawn in to queen for a faster mate? The reason I keep running into this question is that when I play against a computer it never resigns so I have to play the game all the way to the bitter end, and some programs take a long time to calculate each move even in ridiculously lost positions like that, so it would be nice to know a good rule of thumb to hasten the mate.