Now we’re going to fill that wonderful crust you have chilling in the fridge.*

This is the first time I’ve ever actually written out a recipe for my pot pie. It’s always such a creative endeavor and rarely the same twice. In fact, a pot pie is intended to be a hodge podge of the meats and root vegetables you need to use up, but that may not be enough as a stand alone meal.

I say this to encourage you to branch out from what I’ve written here. Use turkey leftovers after thanksgiving. If you had a beef roast that no one wants to finish, substitute that for the chicken and use rutabagas rather than potatoes.

You get the idea. You are the pot pie artist.

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My Ingredients:

• 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) of salted butter
• 1 medium onion
• 2 medium or 3 small potatoes
• 2 large carrots or a handful of babies
• Rotisserie Chicken (minus the breast I used for my salad the day before…)
• 1 can or box of condensed cream of mushroom soup**
• 1 cup frozen peas
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning (not pictured)***
• salt and pepper to taste
• one recipe of the pie crust, divided into two, chilled clumps

 

Preheat your oven to 350°.

Melt your butter in a large pot over medium heat while you chop your onion

and add it to the butter, browning it while you chop the potatoes

and then the carrots.

Let this simmer in the butter on medium heat for about 10 minutes while you debone your chicken. Turn down your heat if the butter starts to burn.

The butter and root vegetables will clear as they cook. They should be cooked, but still firm and not mushy.

Add the chicken

and the condensed soup.

After that’s thoroughly heated through, add the peas and seasoning, folding gently without breaking the peas.

Do your taste testing here, and correct with salt and pepper, as needed.

Turn off the heat and let your filling cool a bit while you roll out the pie crust.

Grease and flour a deep dish pie plate.

Take one cold pie crust. When it comes out of the cling wrap it will look like this:

On a GENEROUSLY FLOURED counter surface, knead it two to three times until it looks like this:

This should not take a long time, and you don’t want to over work it or the heat from your hands will melt the butter.

Roll it out to a 12”-14” circle, flouring and turning as you go so it doesn’t stick to the counter.

Place it in your greased plate,

and fill with your yummy filling.

Roll out the top crust as you did with the bottom and place on top of the filling:

Now, pinch a seal by squeezing the top and bottom crusts together, all around your pie.

The second seal is formed by turning the edges under,

and pinching again.

It should look like this when you’re done:

To create a decorative edge, pinch and twist between your left thumb and index finger,

and press down against your thumb with your right index finger.

Cut steam vents so you don’t create a chicken pot bomb in your oven…

and brush with a whisked egg wash to make your crust shine.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes to 1 hour, checking to ensure your crust doesn’t burn, and turning to make sure it browns evenly around. The filling should be gently bubbling through the steam vents.

This is just….

oh, man….

you just gotta try it.

 

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*If you have a frozen crust, thaw it in the fridge the night before.

**If you like a pie that has gravy oozing out, use one and a half to two cans of soup. Watch your sodium and salt as you increase soup, though. It gets salty quickly.

***A note on the poultry seasoning. I would highly recommend buying a quality organic seasoning. The “regular” seasoning is pulverized into a powder and you cannot see the individual herbs, and I don’t think the taste is as good. If you’re making a beef pot pie, try using steak seasoning (watch that it doesn’t get too salty) or just rosemary, salt and pepper.