- Hey bakers.
John Kanell from "Preppy Kitchen" here,
and today we're making chicken pot pie soup.
It's like soup and chicken pot pie had a delicious baby,
and you're gonna eat every single last drop.
Did I mention these puff pastry Parmesan thyme crackers?
They're amazing, and you're gonna love it.
Let's get started.
For an extra punch of flavor,
we're gonna roast our carrots and potatoes.
These are gonna be so delicious.
You might wanna like make double
because I snacked on a ton of these during recipe testing.
These are little Yukon Gold baby potatoes,
and they're super creamy.
So we're just gonna cut them in half
and maybe like six pieces each.
Think of nice pieces that'll end up on a spoon.
It'll also help them roast really quick.
I want to end up with 2 1/2 cups of potatoes, ish.
You can always add more.
Make it four cups if you want.
The potatoes are really good.
One generous cup of potatoes, 1 1/2 more to go.
2 1/2 cups of potatoes on my roasting pan,
and now I want about two cups of carrots.
They are gonna shrink up in the oven.
So err on the side of generosity here.
That might be enough.
Let's check it out.
Give your carrots a quick trim.
Now we're gonna cut them into like quarter inch
thick slices or so.
Careful of your fingers.
Remember, you're holding anything
that you're chopping like this.
You protect those little, precious fingertips
and only having your knuckles as a guide on the knife.
Oh,
and be extra careful at the tip.
That's about two cups.
Let's dump this onto our baking sheet.
Pull it up here.
We're going to liberally drizzle two tablespoons
of olive oil on here.
Crack some pepper.
That was about half a teaspoon-ish,
and then we're gonna sprinkle one teaspoon of sea salt
on here as well.
If you're wondering why people specify a type of salt,
like salt's salt.
It actually isn't.
If you're using iodized table salt, it's pretty harsh.
Sea salt is a little bit mellower, and then you know
there's various varieties and textures as well.
Give that a nice toss.
We want everything coated and seasoned up.
This will cook for 14 minutes at 450.
Halfway through it, you're gonna toss things,
not with your fingers, really scorching hot.
And just mind the edges because they will cook first,
especially if you have a hot spot in your oven.
All right into the oven.
While that's in the oven, let's do some more chopping.
One cup of celery,
and it's going to be pretty thinly sliced.
One cup of celery.
That's about it.
You can give it a little bit of a further chop as well.
Now, I need two cups-ish of onion.
That's a little bit less than this, but I love onion.
I'll be using some more, same for the garlic.
Yeah, give that onion a dice.
That's a generous cup right there and a little more.
This is my favorite way to chop onions up by the way.
If you have a way that you think is better,
let me know in the comments,
and I would love to learn from you.
This is pretty quick though, and it's fairly safe.
Haven't cut myself yet.
Let's add this into a bowl as well, carefully.
Okay, that's a big two cups.
Supposed to use a tablespoon of garlic.
I'm assuming that's about like ten cloves,
but I'll be conservative and go one, two, three,
four, five, six cloves.
Just give them a smash.
That helps to release their oils.
I chopped that whole onion
without tearing up until just now.
I'm pretty impressed.
That was a nice, delayed reaction there.
All right, now chop, chop, chop, chop.
All right, have my onion.
Garlic's getting added to the onion.
For this recipe, you can use 1 1/2
to 2 plus pounds of chicken.
I'm using closer to two.
I love my chicken soup just full of ingredients.
We're gonna give this just a really quick dice.
We want to have nice, small pieces that fit on your spoon,
and they're gonna be really nicely browned.
I keep to my chicken breast.
You can use whatever you like.
I, actually, prefer dark meat,
but some people in my household will not touch it.
So, we make these sacrifices.
Six slices of bacon are also gonna get just a quick chop.
The fat from these will render up in our Dutch oven
and just add to the depth of flavor.
If you don't eat pork, skip the bacon.
I actually made a test version of this without last night,
and it was amazing.
So, both are fine.
Adding a tablespoon or so of olive oil into my Dutch oven.
You could use a big pot if you want to.
Once that oil's starts to shimmer, add the bacon in, and
we'll just be moving it around for about six or so minutes
until it's nice and crisped up.
(bacon sizzles)
Whoa.
Oh my God.
Thank goodness I'm wearing glasses.
Just fishing the crispy ones out so nothing burns,
and everything gets a nice, even bake or cook.
Well, I might have had that on high instead of medium.
So, got crispy, but I think it's totally fine.
This recipe is almost foolproof.
Seasoning my chicken with a teaspoon of salt
and as much pepper as we'd like.
Not gonna dictate amounts here.
Now we're gonna cook the chicken in that rendered bacon fat
and olive oil in a couple batches.
We're cooking the chicken until it's just brown.
So move it around.
You're gonna take it out.
Do a couple batches.
Don't let anything burn, and it's gonna cook through
during the actual soup simmering.
So we're really just kinda just sealing in some
of that moisture and flavor and giving it a head start.
In that same hot Dutch oven, we're adding in our onion,
our garlic, and our celery.
Stir, stir, stir.
It's gonna soften up and give you so much amazing flavor.
Channeling Martin Short in a wedding or is it, no wait,
in that a
"Father of the Bride."
Amazing.
(John moans)
That smells like heaven already.
I'm also gonna give a little tiny bit of olive oil extra.
All right.
Now we're just gonna stir occasionally
for about five to seven minutes.
Let this soften up and caramelize just a tiny bit.
After your mirepoix is nice and soft,
then we're gonna add into two tablespoons of butter.
Stir it up.
Get them coated.
It will make them nice and glossy,
and then it's time for the flour.
After the butter's all melted and those vegetables are nice
and glossy, we're gonna sprinkle in six tablespoons
or 54 grams of all-purpose flour.
Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir
and then cook that for a minute.
Don't judge me, but I'm using store bought chicken broth.
Four cups, just one full container.
If you have the time and already have
in your freezer hanging out,
use your homemade chicken broth.
It'll be even more amazing,
but not everybody has time for that, including me.
After the chicken broth,
we're gonna add in 2 1/2 cups of milk.
You can use 2% or whole,
depending on how luxurious you're feeling.
Stir it up, and we're gonna let it come to a boil.
Once your soup's come to a boil,
reduce the heat down to low.
And we're gonna add in our chicken
as well as all of our vegetables now.
Add in all those delicious, roasted vegetables.
Stir it up.
When our chicken and roasted vegetables go into that pot,
we can also add in some thyme.
You can dump a few sprigs in here
and fish them out at the very end,
or you can take the leaves off of the stems,
crush them, give them a little chop, and add them in.
It's totally up to you.
I'll just be dumping in the whole thing
and fishing them out at the end.
But I will give them a little crush
just to active the oils first.
And we're gonna let it simmer for about 10 minutes
so it all kind of cooks together and thickens up a bit more.
All right, after your soup's thickened up,
we're gonna add in two cups of frozen peas.
Just stir them in.
And this is a great time to check the flavor of your soup
and see if you need to add anymore salt,
pepper, or whatever.
For our thyme Parmesan crackers, we're gonna crack one egg
into a bowl filled with two teaspoons of water
and give it a whisk.
Nice egg wash are ready to go.
I've one sheet of puff pastry that's thawed out.
We're gonna dump this onto a floured surface.
Remove the paper.
Sprinkle a little bit more flour.
I don't want it to stick,
and we're gonna flatten it out.
This is puff pastry, and we don't want it
to puff up too much.
If you want to make my actual chicken pot pie recipe,
click up over here.
It has a beautiful, lattice top that bakes separately.
So it's ultra crispy and actually really forgiving
if you're doing some hosting duties
and you want to have a nice dinner party with a fancy dish
that you can make ahead.
My puff pastry is significantly flatter, no?
We're brushing the entire surface with this egg wash
because it's gonna make it nice and golden
but also act as a glue to hold all that cheese on there.
All right, we have some egg left over.
Add that to your omelet the next day
or breakfast for dinner.
I don't know.
Now we're gonna sprinkle this evenly with a quarter cup
of Parmesan cheese that you've grated ahead of time
or bought pre-grated if you're busy.
We're adding a tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves
here as well.
So beautiful.
I love them.
You can feel free to add in a little bit extra
if you want to.
No one's gonna judge you.
All right, now we're gonna add about a 1/2 a teaspoon
of a flaky salt.
This is Maldon Sea Salt, my favorite brand.
Not sponsored, just love it.
It gives you these giant flakes of salt.
But unlike table salt or iodized salt,
they're not ultra harsh salt.
It's kind of a mellower salt.
Just by the by.
Finish it off with a little bit of cracked ground pepper.
I'm putting some extra cheese on here
because it's like four months away from my birthday,
and I deserve it.
This was all supposed to be done on parchment paper.
I forgot.
Be right back.
Okay.
Let's see if we make some magic happen here.
Okay, we're gonna cut this into several pieces,
however big you want.
They can be hanging off the side of the bowl
or even just in the soup right when you serve it.
Okay, slide this on.
Do this totally backwards, but it worked.
We're gonna separate the puffed pastry pieces
just a little bit.
The dough's getting spread out
into two different baking sheets so it's not too crowded.
I'm gonna bake it at 400 Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes,
or until it's nice and golden.
In you go.
Totally forgot, but it's fine that since it's puff pastry,
we're actually gonna compress it
with a second baking sheet on top.
So, put a second baking sheet on top
and then pop it into the oven.
Or you know bake it for a few minutes,
remember the instructions and then put it on,
whichever one works best for you.
All right so, very hot.
But let's see what happened.
Clearly one escaped.
Just had to puff up, couldn't be held back.
(pans crash)
All right, these look good.
I don't even mind that little one that's puffed up.
When you're ready to serve the soup,
sprinkle some of the bacon on top
if you haven't eaten it already while you're waiting
for the soup to finish.
I know you.
And then, pop a little cracker in there,
and you can give it to people on the side too
or serve them like you know however you want.
They're delicious.
These potatoes are so creamy.
I can't even tell you.
I was like recipe testing this.
It was real dangerous.
I was just like add more potatoes.
I need more.
(crackers crunch)
That is everything you want in a bite.
Oh my gosh.
Crispy, cheesy, savory, creamy.
Ah.
If this soup looked delicious to you,
but you want to up the ante even a little bit more, make my
fried sage cheesy biscuits.
You'll be in heaven.
You can skip the Parmesan cracker if you want,
and it is just
so tasty.
It goes perfect with this.
If you like my videos, hit that like button and subscribe.
And I'll see you soon.