Recipe 12: Chicken Pot Pie

This past weekend I decided to make Pot Pie during one of our beer transfer sessions.  It was so good that I found myself craving it.  So it became the recipe of the week.  Here is the link to the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cubed
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 1/2 cup sliced celery
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
• 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 2/3 cup milk
• 2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)
2. In a saucepan, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside.
3. In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Changes

The first change that I made was in how I cooked the veggies and chicken.  Instead of boiling and simmering them in water I added chicken broth instead, just to add a little more flavor.  I also added 1 small potato cut into small pieces.
 
So the second change that I made was to increase the sauce.  I doubled everything.  This was because several user recommendations had said that the pie was a little dry.  I ended up not being able to use all of the sauce that my made, but there was only a little extra.  So I think doubling the sauce is still a good idea.


The third change was I replaced the celery seed with garlic salt.  I also added a bit more than 1/4 teaspoon.  It was more to taste.  So I just added it until I thought it tasted right.


The final change was to cook it at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until the crusts was brown. 

The Process

The first step was to cut up all the veggies and chicken.  The picture below shows the size of my potato pieces.

Then simmer everything together.  I just added chicken broth to cover, brought it to a boil and then simmered it.  When covered you have to be pretty careful with the temperature.  I had to pull it off the burner due to almost overflows a couple of times.

 Sprinkles was generally uninterested in the cooking process this week.  After running around meowing at me she decided to settle down.

I bought the Pillsbury roll out dough.  The first time I made this I used the frozen ready made pie crusts, but I wanted to see how these worked.  Either one is fine, but I think I prefer the rolled up ones as the pie plate can be a little deeper or bigger.

Here the sauce is being started with the onions and butter.  While I double most of the stuff for the sauce I did not totally double the butter.  I just used 1/2 cup (1 stick)

Sprinkles always likes when I open the cabinets while I cook so that she can crawl around and get into tight places, as seen below.

So once everything was ready, I placed the chicken and veggies in the pie plate.

Then I poured the sauce over it.  It was a little difficult to get the sauce exactly as thick as I would have liked.  You really have to be careful and add the milk and chicken broth pretty quickly and don't turn the heat down too much until it starts simmering.

Next I covered the Pot pie with the second crust and cut a few slices in it.

And 45 minutes later... it was done!  I got a little bit of leakage on this pie, I think because my pie plate was a 9.5 inch one and the dough was for a 9 inch plate.  Which made it harder to make sure that the dough was pinched together.

And here is a side view.

This dish was really really good and very simple to make.  I definitely recommend trying this out.