- Today, we're making one of my all time favorite dinners,
- [John] Chicken Pot Pie, it's a classic with a twist.
- This is like the easiest recipe
and it's a total crowd-pleaser.
It's a modification of one that I grew up with, in fact,
but I wanted to elevate the presentation so you could serve
at a dinner party and have people say, "Oh my gosh,
"that's so fancy", and you're like,
- [John] "Ugh, it's just chicken pot pie".
Okay, let's get started.
- I have three chicken breasts on my baking sheet
and as you know, chicken breasts have very little to no fat,
so we're gonna cut them into some fat, in this case it will
be olive oil and then season them with some salt, pepper
and a couple of other things.
Just give it a healthy drizzle on either side.
And then add on a pinch of salt right now
A bit of coriander.
light pepper
and a dash of chili powder.
Flip them over and repeat.
Okay, that was super easy, now it'll be baking in the oven
at 375 until the center is cooked through.
It will totally depend based on how big
your chicken breasts are, so be mindful
While my chicken breasts are baking up, I'm gonna make
my savory pastry crust so easy in a food processor
and quick, just one and a quarter cups of all purpose flour,
dump it in.
If you saw my How to Make a Biscuit video,
you'll know to be very, very careful with the blades
as they are razor-sharp.
A quarter teaspoon of Kosher salt.
I use Kosher salt just because the grains are larger,
if you're using a table salt, you gonna have smaller grains
and there's even like fine table salt
and extra fine table salt where
there's basically less air gaps in between
the salt granules, so you're adding more salt in,
so just specifying Kosher salt as a way of kind
of regulating how much salt is in a tablespoon
or teaspoon or whatever.
Now I'm gonna dump in eight tablespoons
or one full stick of unsalted butter
that's chilled and diced,
add the top on
and we're gonna pulse it and then I'm gonna start adding
in some of my ice water.
(blender squealing)
- And now I am not gonna open this into my fingers
in cause I'll get cut again, but the butter
is becoming little granule piece size bits and I'm gonna add
in a squeeze of lemon juice,
a little pulse
(blender squealing)
- And then drizzle in some ice water, this is gonna be maybe
like two to three tablespoons.
(blender squealing)
- You can see it's becoming a bit more raggedy.
(blender squealing)
- So if you look inside right now,
you can see that this is actually going
to become a dough once I give it maybe two to three kneads.
I wanna have those butter lumps
but I don't wanna have giant clumps of butter,
that'd be amazing and flaky, but I'll be making a lattice
with this and a lattice needs to have some structure,
so you can't have those giant pieces of butter,
just little pieces of butter that are unmixed.
I'm ready to dump this out onto a pastry mat.
You can also just use plastic wrap on your counter.
The whole reasoning behind that is you wanna
be able to lift it off, transport it to the fridge to chill
and not worry about like trying to scrape
it off your counter.
Also a good idea to give it a light flouring.
I'm gonna dump this shaggy mixture out on there.
The blade has been carefully removed.
Okay, just press it together and you can see once you press
it together, it automatically becomes dough,
it was just shy of becoming pie dough
in the food processor, and taste a little piece,
so good, my gosh,
that butter, flour, salt, you can't go wrong.
This is ready to go into the fridge to chill for a bit
before I give it a final roll so it's rapid and plastic.
Pop into the fridge for maybe like 15 or 20 minutes.
That chicken needs to rest after it comes out of the oven
for 20 minutes anyways, so this can chill up real nice.
All right, so this recipe calls for two cups
of diced onions.
I'm hoping this gigantic friend over here
will give me a full two cups, but we'll find out
in a moment.
And that's a big onion.
All right, just by the by, when you're chopping anything,
you wanna have the knife securely in one hand,
the knife should be really sharp and then your other hand
will be kind of curled under usually,
so you're not gonna chop your fingers.
You're using your knuckles as a guide like that,
it's very important.
Also, having a knife that's sharp is the most important
because a dull knife and we're hacking at something
and there's more chance of cutting yourself.
I know from experience.
Chop.
(knife banging)
- And this go the other way to dice it.
(knife banging)
- All right, well that onion yielded almost three cups,
so I have a little bit extra that's prepped for dinner
or whatever else.
- [John] Right now we're switching over to a large pot
and I'm adding in a half cup of olive oil
and a drop of butter (chuckles)
or five tablespoons.
We're gonna let this melt and then add in our onions.
I'm adding in a quarter teaspoon of salt
to get this started,
but I'll be seasoning to taste as we go along.
Then one cup of onions, two cups of onions,
and a blessing of a few more.
This is to cook down and just become translucent,
so we're basically gonna sweat the onions out.
Now that my onions are further along,
I'm adding in three cloves of minced garlic,
giving it a good stir and this will all come together
and spice things up.
- While all that's happening in the back
and the chicken is resting, I'm gonna add my carrots in.
We have to peel them, dice them and blanch them.
Blanch is one of my favorite words.
(knife scratching)
- My husband only eats a few vegetables including peas,
which I know all the gooms, these carrots and onions,
so as you can imagine, this is one of his favorite dishes.
None of these chops have to be perfect 'cause
it's just going into basically a chicken stew
with some pastry on top.
Just try and get kind of even sized pieces more or less,
so they all cook the same.
Otherwise you'll have some really mushy bits and some that
are still a bit all done today.
I treat my chopping like an assembly line,
so I'll just do one action for everything and then repeat
before I move on to the next step.
So here I'm cutting everything lengthwise
and some are getting quartered as well,
and then I will be chopping it up.
(knife banging)
- Looks like I have again a bit more than two cups,
but we'll double check.
Yeah.
That's just about two cups and a quarter, but we can add
more carrots or less carrots if you like them or don't.
- [John] All right, some boiling water,
which I'll give a light salt to, my favorite part of baking
is adding salt into boiling water (chuckles)
It changes the boiling temperature,
which is why that happens.
Okay, one cup in, second cup in.
And we're gonna boil this for two minutes or blanch it,
it'll soften things up, so it's all gonna
be finished up in baking.
So my onions and garlic are nice and soft,
starting to caramelize, I'm gonna add in three quarters
of a cup of all purpose flour, stir it together,
and I'm basically making kind of a roux with this,
so that the butter and the oil and the flour
will cook together, thicken up and this is gonna be the base
of the Chicken Pot Pie.
Sauce used to cook on medium low for about two minutes,
just to get that flour all tasting good.
Once you see this bubbling up and kind of jumping off
of the pan, you know it's done, the flour is cooked
and if I leave it alone it kind of bubbles up
and becomes foamy.
All right, now that this is all cooked up,
I'm adding in my four to five cups of stock.
I'm not using a homemade stock because I'm busy and tired.
- Second to last thing to chop is our parsley,
this is gonna add in, a little bit of color,
a little bit of flavor and I don't know,
I just love the subtle taste of parsley personally,
especially flat leaf or Italian parsley.
Let's see how much this is.
Give it a mince.
(knife banging)
- When I'm mincing things like parsley, I like to give
it a chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,
chop, chop, chop, chop, and then use my knife to fold it
over and continue chopping, that way I kind of make sure
that one part is not getting chopped while everything else
on the edge is kind of like untouched.
Let's just measure it out to be sure, and yeah, that's about
a calf cup.
Chicken Breasts rested for over 20 minutes,
so they're nice and juicy, we're just gonna give
them a good cubing, you wanna have bite sized pieces.
Personally, I love fine meat and legs
and all the dark stuff, but I'm using chicken breasts for
this because it's kind of controversial,
some people are really anti dark meat and it seems like all
the people who like dark meat will eat white meat anyways,
so we're making a compromise here.
I just found a bone, I found a bone fragment
in my allegedly boneless chicken breast (clicks)
Seems like you can never trust your butcher
and by butcher, I mean meat department.
Before I add this back into the pot,
I'm taking all my cubed chicken and putting it back
into the pan just so it can absorb all that oil and flavor
from the baking process.
Okay, it can hang out here for a minute
while we get to the rest.
- All Right, so my sauce is nice
and thick now, I don't know if you can see,
but it's really just the right consistency.
Time to pour in a quarter cup of heavy cream, optional kind
of, kind of, you don't have to put the cream in,
but I mean you don't have to do anything.
- [John] Adding your frozen peas, the blanched carrots,
your Pearl onions and then give it a good mix.
Now it's time for that delicious chicken meat, scoop it
all in and then give it a really nice mix,
make sure all those juices are well incorporated,
and then you're gonna finish it off
by adding your minced parsley which you're mix in as well,
and then just let this simmer for a few minutes
while the rest of the pastry comes together.
- My pastry dough is nice and chilled, just warming up
so it's a bit malleable and it's time
to make our lattice tops, so you could totally do
this recipe and just cover it with some puff pastry
and call it a day, but I'm just not a fan
of soggy savory pastry.
If you're making an Apple Pie and the sweet pastry
is like absorbed all those delicious Apple juices,
that's one thing, but for a savory crust, I want to be nice
and crispy, so we're basically making like a lattice cookie
out of the pastry dough and then we're gonna bake
it separately and assemble right before serving.
This way, all of your guests will have pure flakiness,
no soggy mess.
These are the bowls I'm serving my chicken pot pie in it.
If you don't have something like this,
you could use a ramekin or basically anything oven safe.
If you're making a giant chicken pot pie, it's even easier,
just make a giant lattice, cover it and serve like that,
or you can just spoon out all of the chicken pot pie
into a bowl for everybody and then give everybody
a little lattice of their own.
Winter roll with some plastic in between,
just so nothing sticks.
This is my workout for the day.
The nice thing about chicken pot pie is that you can do all
of this in advance so you can make your filling in advance
and then you can make your lattices in advance and just cook
them right before serving or even cook them ahead of time
and keep them in an airtight container
and just assemble it right before serving.
- [John] Now it's time to cut those strips,
roughly half an inch wide, but it's totally up to you,
and of course I'm gonna use a ruler
for a very straight line.
If your strips start warming up, time to freeze them.
Some people are like amazing pie makers
and can do these insane lattices,
especially on Instagram I see a bunch of people who have
like just like geometric wonderment going on in their pies
and that's not me, so if I can do an okay lattice,
it's gonna look good and I'm not gonna be stressed out.
So if you're using a bowl or a ramekin,
- just measure out the top.
- [John] Try and find something that's a similar size,
like I'm using a lid to kind of cut these for,
- you can just press your top on and cut around it
so you can figure something out.
All right, so I have a sill Pat, I'm gonna pop
that onto my baking sheet and now carefully transfer
my lattice over.
One egg and a drop of cream.
- [John] These are gonna get a final egg wash
before I pop them into the oven.
My last tops will bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit
for about 15 minutes or until they're nice and golden brown.
Spoon the filling into your serving bowl
until it's almost brimming over,
and then top with your beautiful pastry lattice.
If you're using oven safe serving bowls, go ahead and toss
it back into the oven at 350 for maybe 10 minutes
just to warm everything up so it's nice and piping hot
for your guests.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley, top with your lattice
and you're ready to serve.
- So if you love the way the lattice looked,
but think, "Oh my gosh, that's a lot of work".
Well, it was a bit of work,
- [John] but here's the shortcut.
You can have one large serving dish for the table
and then make a big lattice top
- that you bake separately, place it on top of the rest
of the filling, and then you can just spoon out chunks
for your guests and they'll have a little bit
of the latticed and it'll be much easier
because you're only making one instead of the several.
Okay, time for a bite.
That crust is so crispy, not soggy at all, and the flavors
are just like classic American perfect dinner.
Okay, thanks for watching.
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