Chicken Pot Pie

My girls love chicken pot pies and I’m embarrassed to say I don’t make them that often. There are a few good commercial brands on the market that we pick up at the market but when I look at some of the ingredients on the label I realize I need to start making them from scratch and freeze some.   I’m not saying I feel guilty about serving my kids commercial products and won’t keep buying them frozen pot pies for convenience, but I think this could be one of those recipes your kids would enjoy preparing with you on a Saturday afternoon.

Let’s Talk about Pot Pies

Rich, savory chicken stew hiding under a pastry crust.  It doesn’t get much more comforting than this, or more universally appealing.  This is a meal our whole family can agree on.  You can make pot pies with just chicken, and have a salad on the side.  Or you can add a lot of vegetables to the filling.  Depending on how busy your day is, you use a premade crust, homemade crust or even puff pastry.

Part craft project, I think your kids will love help making these, especially if they are individually portioned in ramekins.  Another great thing about making these in individual servings is that you can customize the filling based on your family’s tastes.  Kids don’t like mushrooms? No problem - don’t put mushrooms in their servings.

Basic Sauce for Chicken Pot Pie

Like my Kid Friendly Mac and Cheese recipe, this recipe uses a classic sauce with a fancy name. Don’t get nervous about the fancy French name “sauce supreme” or the sauce it is derived from called “velouté sauce”.  Sauce supreme is a simple French sauce based on velouté sauce.

Basically you are making a chicken based velouté sauce (see my simple recipe) and adding a bit of heavy cream or half & half and a squirt of lemon juice. Season with salt & pepper and a little optional poultry seasoning and you have sauce supreme.

Ingredients

• 2 cups velouté sauce, made with chicken stock
• 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipping cream or half and half
• salt and pepper, to taste
• poultry seasoning, to taste (optional)
• juice of half a lemon

Bring the veloute sauce to a boil and stir in the cream or half and half. Simmer over medium-low heat until reduced by about 1/4, stirring frequently. Taste and season with salt and pepper and the optional poultry seasoning, as necessary.

Stir in the lemon juice.

To Make the Pot Pies

Make this in a 9″ pie plate or in 4 to 6 -  8 oz. individual ramekins.  As a time saver, make sure to cut the vegetables in small pieces (no larger than 1/4″ dice) so you will not have to pre-cook them.

Ingredients

• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts and/or thighs, cut into cubes
• a pinch of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 cups diced vegetables - carrot, celery, peas (not diced of course), pearl onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, butternut squash, green beans, corn, lima beans, etc. You can even add greens such as spinach, kale or collards
• 2 cups prepared sauce suprème
• 1-2 Tablespoons of cold butter cut into small pieces
• pastry crust of choice (either store bought or homemade pastry crust)

I like to make a pot pie with just a top crust, but you can certainly make a two-crust pot pie. If using a bottom crust, be sure to pre-bake (also called blind bake) the crust for about fifteen minutes before adding the filling.

Arrange the chicken pieces in the bottom of your ramekins or casserole. Sprinkle with just a pinch of salt and pepper.
Add the vegetables followed by another pinch of salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce suprème over the vegetables.

Dot the sauce with a bit of butter and then arrange the crust over all.  If only using a top crust, wet the rim of your ramekins or casserole and press the crust down to seal.  If using a bottom crust, press the top crust to the bottom crust.  Cut several vent holes in the crust and bake at 425°F for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Let cool for ten minutes before serving.

Variations

• Make a decorative lattice top for your crust by cutting and weaving strips of pie dough.
• Add some diced hard-boiled egg to your pot pie.
• Any fresh, seasonal herbs can be stirred into your sauce before pouring it over the chicken and vegetables. Tarragon is particularly nice in the springtime, but use what your family likes.
• Some cooked and crumbled bacon makes a nice addition to pot pie.
• Pot pie is a great way to use up leftovers, so look in the fridge and use any leftover cooked or fresh vegetables that you have on hand.
• Rather than using raw chicken, use leftover roasted or rotisserie chicken.
• The best chicken pot pie isn’t made with chicken at all. It’s made with turkey.  Make turkey stock with your leftover Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey and use up your leftovers, including the green bean casserole, by making a turkey pot pie.

Related Topics

Kid Friendly Recipes

I just finished reading an interesting article in The New York Times by Mark Bittman called Slow and Low Is The Way To Go, dated January 29, 2003, about cooking with a slow cooker or as I call it - a crock-pot. My sister-in-law prepared a recipe from this article for braised short ribs that was outstanding and one I want to reproduce for some friends this weekend.

While reading it, I was motivated to throw a meal together in my slow cooker so I went to the freezer to see what was on hand and came up with this very slow but easy recipe for Braised Chicken, Sausage and Beans. I had no idea how it was going to turn out but I figured “how bad could it be?” with all these tasty ingredients.

Be sure to read How to Braise on my web site.

My surprise was how much my whole family enjoyed it. My kids usually like what I cook but last night they made comment after comment about how good the meal was. There was a lot of broth, maybe too much so I served the meal in soup bowls and had soup spoons on the table.

I served it with Israeli couscous, also called Ptitim, a wheat based pasta that is shaped like round pearls and much bigger than the couscous we are used to finding in the supermarkets.  We enjoyed some Ptitim on Saturday night while dining at a friend’s and I mentioned to my wife that I needed to find some at a specialty market. Turned out I already had a couple of boxes in my pantry. The kids loved it and as we all know, if the kids love something different, stock up on it.

A Little Israeli Couscous History

According to Wikipedia, “Ptitim” was invented during the austerity period in Israel, when rice was scarce, in order to provide the needs of the Mizrahi immigrants, whose diets were largely made up of rice and couscous. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, asked Eugen Propper, one of the founders of the Osem food company, to quickly devise a wheat-based substitute to rice. Consequently, it was nicknamed “Ben-Gurion’s Rice” by the people.

Braised Chicken, Sausage, and Beans Slow Cooker Style

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken thighs - remove skin
• 6 sweet sausage links - sliced into 1/2 inch slices, slightly frozen
• 2 cans, 14 oz cannellini beans
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 head of napa cabbage, sliced
• 2 cups of roasted chicken stock
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper

How to Prepare at Home

I pulled my slow cooker (crock-pot) out of the cabinet and turned it onto high. No use waiting while I prepped my ingredients, which took no time at all.

First I removed the skin from the chicken thighs and cut off any extraneous fat and tossed the thighs into the pot. Next I sliced the sausages into 1/2 slices and added them to the pot. The sausages were not completely defrosted so they were actually easier to slice by not falling apart.

Add the canned cannelloni beans with their liquids.

Finely chop up the onion and add it to the pot.

I added two cups of roasted chicken stock but I could have gotten away with one cup. There was a lot of liquid in the pot which was fine with me because it had such an awesome flavor. I’m going to eat the leftovers as a soup today for lunch.

I sliced up a head of Napa cabbage and added it to the top, seasoned with salt and pepper, put on the top and let it cook for about 6 hours.

About 15 minutes before serving I added the balsamic vinegar and gave it a stir. Tasted it and adjusted seasonings with salt and pepper.

Prepare the Israeli couscous by simmering a cup of couscous in 1-1/4 cups of water. Now that I think of it, I could have used some of the liquids from the slow cooker to make the couscous. Hmmm, maybe next time.

I put a couple of spoonfuls of couscous in each shallow bowl and served the chicken, sausage and beans over it and ladled some of the cooking liquid around it. A very simple and tasty meal. You always hear me say how much I like “quick and easy” dishes, now I can say how much I enjoy “slow and easy” braised meals.

Chicken Breasts Rolled with Basil and Cheese
Adapted from The Wine and Food Lover’s Diet

Serves 4

My neighbor Marlee is teaching herself how to cook and I’ve been offering her some tips, suggestions and mostly encouragement to just start cooking and have fun with it. I asked her to find a recipe, prepare it and then write about it for my blog.

Here is what Marlee had to say about chicken breasts rolled with basil and cheese. I think she did a great job and I like that she tried baking the chicken instead of pan frying as the original recipe called for.

Marlee’s First Blog Post

As a recent college graduate with little cooking expertise, I am teaching myself how to cook. After a quick search on the internet for an easy and fun chicken recipe, I landed on this one and cooked it for my parents and brother last week. With little experience in the kitchen, I found this to be very easy to make and super delicious. There are a couple of things I would have done differently:

• Be careful when pounding your chicken flat, as some sections of my chicken were about to fall off and this made rolling a little bit difficult. One solution to this is to focus more on pounding the thick sections and be careful on the thinner areas. Or, you could butterfly your chicken breast, creating a thinner, larger cut of meat that’s much easier to roll.

• Don’t layer on the cheese spread too thick. I was slabbing on the delicious herb cheese spread so thick that when I began to roll the chicken breast, cheese spread was oozing out of the sides and made a mess. So, make sure to spread evenly and use judgment on how thick to pile it on. The chicken turned out fine and tasted great, so if you don’t mind a little mess, pile it on.

• Be careful when cutting off the Butcher’s twine. Unfortunately, some of the outer crispiness from the breadcrumb mixture came off when I cut the butcher’s twine. Obviously this is going to be sort of inevitable, since I highly recommend tying the chicken breasts before dipping them in the egg and breadcrumbs, but use caution so you don’t lose too much!

• Use a lot of basil! I used only 2-3 leaves per breast, which I thought would have been enough. In my personal opinion, it was not. Get enough leaves to coat your chicken breast.

Ingredients:

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• Fresh basil or spinach leaves (enough to coat a chicken breast)
• 5 ounces herb cheese or herb cheese spread (Boursin makes a great garlic herb cheese)
• 2/3-cup Parmesan breadcrumbs
• 1 egg, beaten well
• Salt
• Pepper
• Butcher’s twine
• Toothpicks

How to Make at Home

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Placing chicken breast between sheets of plastic wrap, lightly pound the chicken using a meat mallet to about ¼”.  Season breasts with salt and pepper.
2. If using basil, place in a small amount of boiling water for a few seconds and then set aside. If using spinach, place in a small amount of boiling water and let them wilt a little, about a minute or so. Place aside, draining excess water and coarsely chop the spinach.
3. Spread the cheese over each half breast, making sure to coat the entire surface. I used herb cheese spread found at my local store, but Boursin garlic herb cheese or similar works well too.
4. For basil leaves and spinach, place on chicken, making sure to cover the surface.
5. Carefully roll the chicken, starting with the smallest end, very tightly. Secure each roll with 2 wooden toothpicks and enough butchers’ twine to wrap around the largest part of the roll.
6. The recipe I used told me to then place the rolls in a skillet, but I decided to go a different way and bake these with a crispy outer skin. For a healthier option, skip these steps and go straight to bake.
7. In one shallow bowl, beat one egg well. In a separate shallow bowl pour out your 2/3-cup Parmesan breadcrumbs, (Can always combine a couple tablespoons of Parmesan cheese and regular bread crumbs). Dip your roll into the egg first, covering all sides, then transfer and roll into the breadcrumb mixture. Finally transfer the chicken rolls to a greased baking dish.
8. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until your chicken has reached an internal temperature of about 160-165 degrees F. Use a meat thermometer to check temperature. Chicken should be slightly browned.
9. Let sit for 5-10 minutes and serve.

TIP: For an excellent pan sauce, deglaze any browned bits from the bottom of the baking dish with white wine and reduce on stovetop with 2/3 cup chicken broth, stir and let cook until the liquid has reduced to half the amount, about 2-3 minutes. Pour this pan sauce over the chicken and serve.