Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken pot pie can be the easiest meal you’ve ever made, with all the shortcuts possible — or, you can take your sweet time to make each component from scratch, with detailed attention. I love to use this dish as the perfect creation with remnants of leftover chicken and veggies. Usually, I’ll prepare all the components upfront, so I can hit the right timings for the different vegetables, with their varying cooking times.
Choose your own veggies for a customized filling
The veggies I was using were: (sliced) raw carrots, frozen peas, fresh corn (cut off the cob), leftover roasted potatoes & carrots. You can mess around with the ratios as you please. In my house, we dislike celery, so we leave it out all-together. Make this pot pie fit your taste!
What you need
[fat] butter 🧈
[aromatics] onion 🧅 and garlic 🧄
[veggies] peas, carrots 🥕 (peeled & sliced), corn 🌽 , potatoes 🥔
[meat] chicken 🍗
flour
milk 🥛 , chicken stock
pie crust
salt & pepper
herbs / seasoning
What to do
Make the filling
Start with heating 4 tbsp of butter on medium heat in a deep pan or pot. Once the butter has melted, add 2 medium onions, chopped, and 3 minced cloves of garlic. Stir and cook until the onions become translucent.
Add sliced carrots, corn, and mostly, any other raw vegetables you want to dice and add. Stir and let the veggies cook for several minutes.
As the veggies start getting cooked, just soft enough to break with pressure, add in 4 tbsp of all-purpose flour. Stir well and cook until the raw flour smell goes away.
Slowly add in 4 cups of liquid: 2 cups of chicken stock and 2 cup of milk (or any ratio of the two that adds up to 4 total cups). Mix away any clumps of flour.
Once the mixture is smooth, add in any of your frozen vegetables. I put in 1/3 cup of frozen baby peas. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer on medium heat for several minutes.
When the frozen veggies start getting soft, you want to add any already cooked components. I had chicken and roasted carrots, potatoes, and onions leftover from previous meals; so, I diced up everything into smaller pieces and folded it into the pot pie filling.
Continue cooking to reduce the mixture to a consistency with just a little residual liquid. Remove from the heat when you hit that spot, and let the filling sit and cool down for at least 15 minutes.
Prep the dough
If you want to make the dough from scratch, Binging with Babish has a fairly foolproof recipe. I took the easy, weeknight shortcut and used Pillsbury pie dough.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Follow the instructions on the box. When ready to assemble the pie, roll out one dough layer on some parchment paper to even out the dough. Carefully transfer the dough to a cast iron pan or a pie plate.
Fill the crust with the pot pie filling, and roll out and cover with the second dough roll.
Crimp the pie with your hand or a fork to seal the edges, and cut some steam vents in the dough. My pie did not look very pretty, but it definitely stood strong on the taste test.
The final step
Bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees F. When the baking time is up, let the pot pie rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing and eating.
