Easy Chicken Pot Pie

I love comfort food, but since I don't usually have time to cook all day, I also love shortcuts.  When I watched Alton Brown make his easy chicken pot pie on Good Eats, I modified it slightly and called it my own.  This dish is incredibly easy, but it tastes great and makes me happy.  Maybe it will do the same for you.  The magic lies in roasted chicken and frozen vegetables, but with some clever steps to add the home-cooked appeal.  Trust me, it's worth it.

Easy Chicken Pot Pie
Recipe adapted from Alton Brown

• 1 3.5 cup bag of frozen peas, carrots, corn, and beans
• 1 to 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 3 cups low sodium chicken broth or stock
• 1 cup milk
• 3.5-4 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley, or ¼ cup fresh, chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 1 store-bought roasted chicken
• 2 pie shells
• 1 egg

Equipment needed: pie pan, parchment paper (optional), small ramekins

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Toss frozen vegetables with canola oil and spread evenly onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper (for easy cleanup).  Place into oven and cook until golden brown.  Meanwhile, shred the chicken by hand, removing skin and trying not to burn the heck out of yourself like I always do.  If you have enough room in the oven, throw one pie shell into the pie pan, dock it with a fork in a bunch of places, and blind bake the shell for a few minutes so it doesn't get soggy when you put in the filling later.  Only bake it for about 5-10 minutes, until it starts to firm up but before it browns.  If you have pie weights (or even dried beans), feel free to put these in while baking, to guarantee that the crust doesn't bubble up while it's cooking.

Blind bake the lower pie crust so you don't just have mush underneath the pot pie

If you had pie weights, you could have prevented this bubbling.  Notice the fork pricks where we 'docked' it, to help at least somewhat with preventing this.

In a small saucepan, heat the broth and milk, and have it ready.  Meanwhile, in your largest sauté pan heat 1 tablespoon of butter and sweat (cook over low heat, barely letting the butter sizzle) the onion and celery.  Make sure not to brown the vegetables, since you want something more delicate for this.  Add 2 more tablespoons of butter to the celery mix and cook out the water.  Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 to 2 minutes; what you're doing is creating a simple roux (mixture of fat and starch, which will thicken the dish without leading to lumps) without all of the energy this usually requires.  Be careful to not leave this unattended, as it will begin to brown quickly, and you want a light colored / flavored roux.

Sweat the vegetables in what seems like too much butter, then add flour and make a lazy man's roux that will thicken the milk / broth mix

Don't forget about the vegetables!  Give them a shake every once in a while so they brown evenly.  I like parchment to help with cleanup after.

Whisk in the hot milk mixture and cook until thickened.  You may want to do about 75% of this to start, and see how thick it looks before adding the rest.  This shouldn't be too runny, but at the same time I've made it without enough liquid, and it can be too dry and gummy.  So keep adding a little more liquid at a time, and remember this key fact - you won't know how thick the mixture will be until two things happen: the mixture comes to a full boil, and then you cool it slightly to see how it will set up.  You can dip in a spoon and check the nappe - the ability to coat the back without dripping when you drag a finger across, but just on the border of this happening.  French people are inherently awesome with this kind of stuff, so if you can't figure this out, just find anyone from France, and they will do it for you.  That's one of the best terms of the Treaty of Paris after the French and Indian War, although giving us Louisiana was pretty good too.  And remember, the best way to ask someone from France for a favor is to yell at them loudly in English, so that they understand you.

Add the parsley, salt and pepper.  Now, you've been checking on those vegetables in the oven to make sure they're not burnt, right?  Let's hope so, because now it's time to use them.  Grab the vegetable sheet and throw everything into the saute pan, along with the shredded chicken.  Pour this into the pre-baked pie shell, cover with another pie shell, and crimp with a fork around the edges.  Trim the edges off of the dough and set these aside.  WARNING: don't overfill the pie!  You will have more filling than will comfortably fit into a standard pie pan, so set that aside for something else.  See my note at the end of the recipe.

This may look like a lot of filling, because it is.  This WILL NOT FIT into one pie crust, so don't force it.

This is about as full as you're going to get.

Crimp with a fork around the edges, thusly.  I had to have a friend help here, because I don't understand pies.

Break the egg into a small bowl, and add a tablespoon of water.  Whisk this up to make an egg wash, which you brush onto the pie crust to promote browning.  Apply a good coating without ending up with an omelet on top of your pot pie.  Place the pot pie into the oven and cook until browned and the mixture is hot and bubbly, about 20-25 minutes.

I got bored and fashioned a small chicken out of extra dough.  It was delicious.

Serve in wedges with whatever sides you like (not that this needs any)

 

Use the leftover filling and pie dough to make personal sized pot pies

NOTE: so what gives, you followed the recipe to the letter and now got too much filling, and it doesn't fit in the pie shell?  Deep breath, you have loose ends mid-cooking and you're getting hysterical.  This is an easy fix.  You're going to have little bits of the pie crust left over after you trim it down, so roll those out into a small sheet, and get out your ramekins.  Put the remaining filling into these, and cover each one with a small circle of the dough.  Crimp around the edges, and now you've got single-serve pot pies, just without a bottom.  Slightly more healthy, and great fun for kids.

Seafood Gumbo

This is a really interesting recipe for a lighter version of a seafood gumbo. Typically, the base of a gumbo is the roux - a mixture of equal parts of fat and flour, typically in unhealthy quantities. The idea is that you coat the starch molecules in fat and cook the heck out of them until they begin to develop more complex flavors, typically to the point that you end up with a nutty richness and deep brown, or 'chocolate' roux. This is a time consuming and irritating process, but it's been established as the basis for a lot of southern cooking, and I can't argue with centuries of successful (and large) southern ladies. So I was intrigued when I discovered that this was going to be a fat-free roux; only the flour was going to be browned, sans butter, which seemed somewhat confusing. In the end, this worked out great, although it was no less irritating to stir flour in a dry pan for 12 minutes so it wouldn't burn.

Gumbo is traditionally made with crawfish or shrimp, some kind of meat, and commonly with okra as a thickening agent. If you haven't worked with okra before, it's a bizarre, slimy pod that's delicious when prepared right, and obnoxious when it's just boiled and served to you in a big bowl. I used some flash-frozen okra from the restaurant supply store, but if you can get fresh, go for it. Another ingredient you might see is filé powder (sassafras leaves), but we're not going there today. As the vegetable base, as opposed to the standard mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onions seen in a lot of northern European and American cooking, the gumbo uses the Louisiana variant of the trinity, which consists of bell peppers, celery, and onions.

My recipe used shrimp and a flat fish filet, in this case swai. The recipe called for snapper, but I was tipped off to a snapper shortage at the grocery store, so I went with the closest looking fish. I don't think there would be a huge difference in the final flavor regardless, and at least having the fish filet with the shrimp was a nice combination of textures.

For the inquisitive, I looked into the origins of this dish, and discovered that the recipe presented here is probably some kind of bastardization between the Cajun and Creole gumbo recipes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbo), based on the inclusion of tomato, okra, and celery all together. I don't really care which one it was - it was delicious, hearty, a little spicy, and satisfying.

Gulf of Mexico Gumbo

Cooking Light, June 1997

Yield: 9 servings (serving size: 1 cup gumbo and 1/2 cup rice)

Prep Time: 1.5 hours

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 2 cups chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup sliced okra
• 1 cup chopped tomato
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 4 (8-ounce) bottles clam juice
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 pound skinned red snapper or other firm white fish fillet, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
• 3/4 pound crayfish*, peeled (I used more shrimp)
• 1/4 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
• 4 1/2 cups hot cooked long-grain rice

*Note: One (8-ounce) container select oysters, undrained, can be substituted for crayfish, if desired.

Place flour in a 9-inch cast-iron skillet; cook over medium heat 20 minutes or until browned, stirring constantly with a whisk. (If flour browns too fast, remove it from heat, and stir until it cools down.) Remove from heat; set aside.

Go from this...

...to this. I probably could have gone darker, but there was some serious smoke coming up from the pan, and I wasn't prepared to hit the flash point of the flour dust, causing a wicked explosion in midair.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic; sauté 8 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add okra and tomato; cover and cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1 1/2 cups water, salt, cayenne, garlic powder, black pepper, clam juice, and bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Gradually add browned flour, stirring with a whisk. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

The okra. Slime not shown, but it's there, trust me. Those crazy Cajuns figured out how to use this slime as a thickener - way to find the silver lining.

Here's the trinity - onions, celery, and bell peppers

All of the vegetables, before adding in the liquids and roux

The gumbo, pre-fish addition. It was thick immediately after adding the roux (browned flour). Bear in mind that you won't see the full thickening potential until the mix has come to a full boil.

Add snapper; cook 5 minutes. Add green onions, crayfish, and shrimp; cook 10 minutes or until seafood is done. Stir in hot sauce; discard bay leaves. Serve gumbo over rice.

The swai filet, cut into bite-sized pieces for addition to the mix.

The finished gumbo, with some bread I tried to make. The presentation impressed my guests. The flavor floored us all.