Last week I received an e-mail newsletter from King Arthur Flour that included a recipe for Classic Chicken Pot Pie. I forwarded it to my husband, who spends most of his afternoons watching the Food Network and surprising me with some fantabulous dinner when I walk in the door from work. He found a couple of shows that demonstrated making chicken pot pie, including Anne Burrel’s Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. We’ve watched several of her shows and the one thing both of us have noticed about her cooking is she loves salt. This poses a problem for me, since I’m trying to cut out as much salt as I can from my diet.
Terry decided to try her recipe for Autumn Chicken Pot Pie with respect to the filling. I decided to try the King Arthur Classic Chicken Pot Pie recipe with respect to the pastry shell. Terry substituted potatoes for the butternut squash and pea’s for the haricot verts, the peas were not added to the simmering chicken and vegetables until the last ten minutes to insure they didn’t over cook. The gravy was made from chicken broth that had been fortified by the chicken and the vegetables cooking in it. The end result was a really rich and smooth gravy. By itself the gravy tasted wonderful, in the pot pie it seemed a little sweet without the added salt to offset the onion.
The crust recipe from KAF included a teaspoon of vinegar with the ice cold water, dribbled in by the tablespoonful. Once I got the dough into a block, I covered it with clear wrap and refrigerated it until the filling and gravy were ready to fill the crocks. I rolled out the dough on parchment paper, using the clear wrap as a buffer between my rolling pin and the dough. I admit I was skeptical of the egg wash as glue between the crock and the crust, but it worked very well.
“The crust was to die for, it was flaky and had a wonderful buttery taste.” –Terry
The only drawback I saw to this recipe was the amount of time it took Terry to get the filling and gravy done. The Autumn Chicken Pot Pie recipe claims ninety minutes of ‘cook time’ but we spent nearly four hours … so we definitely have room for improvement.
Hot out of the oven, the pot pies delighted our palettes and stuffed out tummies with home-cooked goodness.
