Chicken Pot Pie
These delicious chicken pot pies are endorsed by my (rather fussy) children. The puff pastry is homemade but store bought is absolutely fine. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place in the fridge the day before you intend using it. The recipe for the homemade puff pastry is on my baking blog here, but making it is quite “extra”. I LOVE the all butter one from Woolies, but that is my personal preference and honestly you can get great results with any puff pastry.
The beauty of this recipe is you can make it with any vegetables. I used mushrooms, but you could replace these with frozen veg to make a more balanced “diet”. If poaching the chicken is a step to far, just use a shredded rotisserie chicken.
Time saver!
I scored the top of the puff pastry for purely “pretty-purposes”. You can skip that step, OR go crazy and cut out some leaves for the top out of puff pastry to make it extra pretty. These is something very therapeutic about making pretty food in my opinion.
My children love the mini ramekin versions for lunch and storing them in the freezer to make a quick afterschool lunch. I baked them fully, before freezing them. Nothing is easier than defrosting them out in the morning and then reheating them in the air-fryer.
Chicken Pot Pie
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- Pastry brush
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken
- 1 carrot roughly chopped
- 1 onion halved
- 5 peppercorns
- 50 g g butter
- 250 g mushrooms quartered or sliced
- 50 g flour
- 500 ml milk
- pinch salt and pepper
- 250 g puff pastry
- 1 egg lightly beaten
Instructions
- Poach the chicken
- Place your whole raw chicken in a large pot. Add in the carrot, onion and peppercorns. You can also add celery, bay leaves, cloves etc for flavouring.
- Bring the pot to the boil and poach for about 20 minutes. If the chicken is not completely covered by water, turn the chicken over halfway through. Check that the chicken is fully cooked through before removing it from the liquid.
- Save the liquid for soup or stew, discard the vegetables and peppercorns. This broth can be frozen for up to 3 months.
- Make the filling
- While your chicken is cooling, prepare your mushroom sauce. Place the butter in a pan and bring to a bubble. Fry the mushrooms until beginning to brown.
- Add all the flour into the pan and stir all the time until the flour is cooked out.
- Gradually add in the milk a little at a time, stirring all the time. Bring it to the boil. If the sauce seems very thick, add a little more milk.
- Season the sauce well with salt and pepper.
- Once the chicken is cool enough to touch, remove the skin and bones from the chicken (these can be further boiled in your broth to enrich it if desired otherwise discard these).
- Shred the chicken and add it to the sauce. Scoop the chicken filling into ramekins or a large casserole.
- Assemble the pie
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Roll out the puff pastry to about 5mm thickness. Cut out circles (for the ramekins) or a "lid" for the casserole. Score the top of the pastry if desired and brush with lightly beaten egg.
- Bake for 15 minutes (for the ramekins) or 30 minutes (for one big pie). The pastry should be golden brown and well puffed. Check that it is cooked through before removing it from the oven.
- The pies can be frozen uncooked or fully cooked for up to 3 months. Defrost before baking. For a raw pie use the cooking instructions above, and for a cooked pie reheat fully at 180°C.