Johnny loves chicken pot pie, and I'm a fan of it as well. The last time I made it I didn't have a creamy sauce for it so that was his request for this time. If you have a dairy allergy you can just substitute ghee for the butter. Once again everything for tonight's dinner was made from scratch, and was easy enough to do even with the migraine headache I had.
I didn't have any pre-made chicken broth so I made my own while I cooked the chicken. Just threw the 2 lbs of chicken into a pot with a bunch of water (approx 6-7 cups) and added some diced onions and carrots, a head of garlic that I smashed, and some herbs that I bought fresh then dried myself (oregano, basil, thyme, and rosemary) and threw in a pinch of crushed red peppers and 2 medium bay leaves as well.
While that's boiling and cooking the chicken it's a great time to start making the crust. Sometimes the old ways are the best so I went with the 3-2-1 approach to pie crusts. The 3-2-1 process is 3 parts flour, 2 parts shortening and 1 part water, it's a time honored way of making it that I don't find that needs to be changed. Take out the food processor and put in 1 1/2 cups of flour, a cup of chilled shortening (Crisco or butter both work great, or even a combination of the 2) and a 1/2 cup of water. I start off with just the flour and cubes of shortening and pulse it for a few seconds then start slowly adding the water. You can tell it's done when it's looking like little grains of salt. Then you just transfer it to your pre-floured mat (or parchment paper) and roll it out with a rolling pin until you get a thin crust. I made 3 large crusts with mine. One went into the dish I was using for Johnny's (he likes top and bottom crusts while I prefer just to have one on top) and that and the other 2 crusts went into the refrigerator until I was ready for them again.
When the chicken was fully cooked I took my strainer and separated the chicken and cooked veggies from the broth which I put aside to use in a few minutes. The chicken went to the cutting board and the veggies went to a bowl for when the sauce was done. Once the chicken was all cut up I remembered that I had to grab the bay leaves out and once that treasure hunt was done, I transferred the chicken to the veggies and went to start on my sauce.
I used unsalted butter but for this step you can substitute ghee as well. Just melt 1 stick into a sauce pan (I used the pot I had cooked the chicken in) and then added 3/4 c of flour until it was a paste, adding 1/4 c of the flour at first then sprinkling in a bit more as I stirred it to make sure it was mixed well. Then I added 3 cups of the broth and stirred it into the paste over a low heat until it was a nice and creamy sauce. Then came the fun part of adding in the chicken and veggies I had cooked earlier. I also added another chopped carrot (about 1 cup), some peas (another cup) and 2 cooked diced potatoes. (I like to dice up a couple redskin potatoes and cook them in the microwave which only takes a couple minutes) Just stir it all up together in the sauce and you're ready to take the pie crust out of the fridge and all the sauce.
After you put the top crust on the pies, don't forget to cut small vents in the top. I like to do small slashes around the edges to resemble sun rays and then make a smiley face in the middle. I think it's cute and kids and Johnny both smile when they see it.
Pop them into your preheated oven @ 350F and bake for 30-45 minutes, and your crust is a nice golden brown color. It's really hot when it comes out of the oven so I'd recommend waiting 5-10 minutes before you serve it. Johnny's impatient when it comes to my cooking so he ended up burning his mouth on a bite, but he claims that it was worth it.
Another dinner that was healthy but my picky eater loved anyways. Don't think I'll get tired anytime soon of him telling me how delicious my cooking is.
Hoping that I can get pictures of the finished product before it disappears next time for y'all as well.
Until next time,
Jessa
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