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Nothing quite says home like chicken pot pie. Okay, except maybe apple pie, but chicken pot pie has to be somewhere near the top of the list. This is mom’s recipe, it’s what I grew up on, and based on the comments of many of my friends, it’s the best chicken pot pie ever. I will neither confirm nor deny this as the only other chicken pot pie I have ever tasted was at a tourist trap in Fiji, and let’s be real, folks: Fijians are not exactly known for their down-home chicken pot pie recipes. Of course, after 3 weeks of Fijian food, all I cared was that it *was* a taste of America, even if it wasn’t exactly the same as mom’s version. At the very least, it did not contain fish, which automatically took it up three stars in my book.
Long ago, I decided that my friend Mary Peyton deserved a homemade dinner for designing the lovely “Dishing the Divine” banner you see at the top of this page (shout out to Mary Peyton – check out the website she designs and manages at www.javisdavis.com). Fortunately, MP had the foresight to confirm our dinner plans the night before she was scheduled to come. I am so glad she did as I had completely forgotten (shhh… don’t tell her!). I racked my brain to come up with something absolutely delicious to make that I already had ingredients for. Final results: chicken pot pie and a spinach salad, along with something chocolatey for dessert.
As a general rule I hate the thawing chicken and cooking it, so usually I just toss a bunch of frozen chicken breasts in boiling water until they are cooked through (about 15-20 min). I use what I need and freeze the rest for later quick-and-easy-to-assemble meals. It would probably be even better if you tossed in some chicken bouillon cubes to flavor the meat a bit!
Oh, and one more thing! I just read about this nifty tool, and I can’t wait to try it with my chicken pot pie. I’ll keep you posted on how it works!
chicken pot pie
2- 9″ pie crusts (one for top and one for bottom)
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
3/4 cup cold milk
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 1/4 tsp dried thyme
16 oz mixed vegetables (or more to taste), thawed
3 cups cooked, cubed chicken
1 egg white, optional
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Melt butter in saucepan. Add flour.
Keep stirring until it makes a paste. Add chicken broth a small amount at a time and stir. Keep adding broth and stirring. The mixture will get stiff after each addition of broth. Add milk slowly and continue stirring.
When thick, add remaining ingredients. Simmer while rolling out your pie crust.
Layer the bottom pie crust in your pie plate. Pour hot chicken mixture on top of the bottom crust.
Add the top crust. Cut a few slits on top (or, be adventurous and make fun designs – Mary Peyton and I chose the letter “B” because both our husbands’ names start with B). Using a pastry brush, brush egg white onto top crust. This will turn it a nice golden brown in the oven.
Place on a baking sheet (to catch anything that might spill out of the crust) and bake for 40 minutes.
Serve heaping slices and eat immediately. I usually just make this my dinner, but you can easily serve a salad alongside!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Madsen // Sep 25, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I can attest that this is one heck-a-good chicken pot pie.
2 Laci // Sep 29, 2009 at 9:57 am
This potpie was AMAZING!!!!!!!!
3 Erin // Sep 30, 2009 at 1:41 pm
we had this last night for dinner…it was delicious! My family loved it..what a hit! The pie ended up being larger than I thought. We had enough for dinner (even seconds by some) for 4, and servings of leftovers for the next day’s lunch for all of us …which thrilled them :) Thanks Paula.
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