Carol made a chicken pot pie the other night and it reminded me that I didn't think I'd ever made one before. So, tonight I threw together a very unknowing pie.
For the filling I used:
- 4-5 raw skinless chicken thighs, medium cubed
- 2-3 raw skinless chicken breasts, medium cubed
- 2 carrots, small dice
- 1 stalk celery, small dice
- 8 mushrooms, thin slice
- 2 cans of commercial chicken broth (gasp!)
- 6 T butter
- 2 T flour
I ran up a quick sauce of the flour, butter, and broth and then seasoned it with pepper, sage, rosemary, thyme, and parsley. Salt wasn't needed because the broth was plenty salty. I tossed the rest of the ingredients (all raw) with the sauce in a large souffle dish. The filling was about 1.5-2 inches below the top edge.
For the crust, I used
- 2 C flour
- 1/4 butter (salted, so if using unsalted, add salt)
which I ran up in the Kitchenaid until large pebbles of butter remained and then ran in about 1/4-1/2 C cold water until it came together. I made it pretty soft rather than a "pie crust" type dough. Rolled it out to about 1/2 inch thick, and tucked the resulting disc down onto the pie. Poked 3 large holes in to let out steam and juices. Which was needed. See below.
Baked at 350 for an hour. Poured off extra liquid into a pot. Continued cooking for another 30 minutes. Removed from oven and again poured off more liquid. Reduced liquid in pot while allowing pie to cool. Dished up pie with extra gravy poured on top. I probably could have skipped this last step, but I am a complete whore when it comes to thick sauces...
The part that I think worked well was having the ingredients at small sizes, but raw, and then cooking the pie all together for a long-ish time.
Tastewise: flavorful. Chicken-y. Crust: more of a dumpling, but still very nice. Next time: either more flour or less broth in the filling. Not a bad first shot, however.
And you may ask yourself: why didn't I make this before?
Posted by dowdy at November 5, 2003 07:44 PM