Chicken Pot Pie

I have always liked the idea of Chicken Pot Pie. Crunchy pie crust, delicious creamy chicken centre with chunks of soft vegetables... Sadly it never worked out that way and I had to resign myself to the fact that the mess of mushy pie crust and super salty chicken lumps in my dish was as close as it was going to come. So you can imagine my surprise when, for reasons which I'm going to blame on my unborn child, I sudden had an intense desire to try and make Chicken Pot Pie like it was supposed to be (I imagine it helped that I was reading a Redwall book at the time too).

I began looking through recipes online and decided that, while there were bits of each of them that seemed like a good idea, I didn't really like any of them as a whole. So I decided to make one myself. After taking stock of my fridge I made my ever loving and patient husband go to the grocery store, while I began combining the things I liked about the ten different recipes I had found.

Also, I already had homemade unsalted chicken stock from when I made a roast chicken, so keep that in mind (a lot of chicken pot pie recipes made you go through the whole process of roasting a chicken and then making stock, but, for convenience sake, I'm going assume you have chicken stock lying around).

5 ish cups of unsalted chicken stock
1 lb. chicken (breasts, thighs, doesn't matter. just don't cut them up)
3 bay leaves
1 tbs. (approx) fresh herbs, minced (I have lemon verbena, oregano and rosemary growing on my deck so I used those, but any would be yummy)
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. salt
4 celery stalks
4 carrots
4 medium potatoes
1 1/2 c. frozen peas
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1/3 c. flour
1 c. heavy cream
Pastry of your choosing

To start, remove the chicken fat off the top of the chicken broth and put the fat into a large frying pan and set aside (if you are using chicken stock from a can or carton, ignore this). Bring the chicken broth to a simmer in a large pot. Add the herbs, salt and raw chicken to the broth. While the chicken is cooking, chop up the veggies into whatever size you feel comfortable with (be sure to keep the onions and potatoes separate). I went with a nice smallish bite-sized piece, that way I could get more than one veggie per spoonful. Once the chicken is cooked through, remove the pieces and set aside. Add the potatoes and let cook until soft. While the potatoes are cooking, heat up the frying pan of fat (if you have no fat or if there isn't much, top it up to about 1/2 c. with butter) and add in the onions and garlic and fry until brown. Back at your pot of broth and potatoes, add in the celery and carrots and keep simmering. In your frying pan, once the onions are browning, add in the flour and brown it a little bit. Then add the heavy cream and stir until thickening. Add the flour and onion mix into the broth and stir vigorously (you don't want lumps). Once the mixture is thickening, add in the frozen peas and dice the chicken into bite sized pieces and then add as well. Let the mixture thicken and heat up the frozen peas for a little bit then dish it into ramekins (individual serving baking dishes, get some if you don't have any---they are so handy!) and top with a circle of rolled out pastry and crimp it around the edges. The trick I found to keeping the pastry from going mushy is just to not put pastry on the bottom, JUST top it. It works WAY better.

Whatever you don't use (I just made two ramekins since I was only feeding me and my hubby) you can freeze.

There you go! Chicken Pot Pie the way it should be! I'm afraid the recipe is sort of ramble-y, but I am not exactly a professional recipe-maker. I hope you enjoyed it (and enjoy it if you make it)!

Love,
Dorothea