Chicken Pot Pie for Ms. J

Ms. J and I were discussing chicken pot pies last week, and I decided I would demonstrate the making of them (at least, how I do it) to encourage her to experiment in her kitchen.

so here we go - first off, I have here 3 small onions, chopped, 3 carrots, diced, and 3 celery ribs diced with a wee bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper:


Then, because in my mind, you can't have comfort food without butter, drop in a few tablespoons of butter (or just a bit more oil):


Let that cook up and soften the veg for a bit, then add in a large handful of flour and cook for 2-3 minutes to get rid of raw flour taste:


Then start adding liquid - in my case, I added a hefty splash of white wine then chicken stock - start out slowly - you don't want it too liquidy. I probably added 1 1/2 c of liquid total at this point.


R asked for some potatoes in the pot pies, so I obliged. I think I'll leave them out in the future. I also added another 1/2 c or so of stock.


Then herbage - thyme, salt, pepper, some dill. You definitely MUST use thyme - I made a chicken pot pie without it once and it tasted disgusting. I also added some mushrooms at this point. In the future, I will saute them in a hot pan first - they didn't really add a lot of flavor to the party.


Then, because I wanted to, I added about 1-2 tbsp of cream


Then added in my previously cooked chicken and let 'r rip for a bit until the potatoes were soft.


Then, in my messy/rustic way, I lined 3 oven-safe bowls (in this case, little Fiesta pie plates) with some puff pastry and baked that at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes. Roll out the puff pastry first, as thinly as you can. It goes a lot further that way!


Then I ladled in the pie filling and topped them with more puff pastry (very rustic, right?) and gave it an egg wash (egg/water, beat, brush). You CAN, of course, roll the puff pastry out and cover and seal the entire pie, but I find that you end up wasting delicious puff pastry that way - some sticks to the cooking vessel and it is always too hot to peel off. Anyways, that's my two cents on that. I'll take an ugly pot pie over one where I lose puff pastry. Anyways, these also baked at 400 degrees, and took about 25 minutes (I threw on the broiler for a minute to get them really browned). Also, I added broccoli to my pot pie which was delicious. Broccoli is, however, the devil incarnate to Mr. R.


Voila (ignore the nasty baking sheet). My pie filling was a bit dry, I must say. I tend to overthink the runniness factor and then leave things too thick or dry. So, when I make these again, will reheat with more stock.


These were pretty tasty - be sure to taste your filling along the way and adjust for salt and other seasonings.