The Secret to Unlocking Chicken Pot Pie Perfection

[00:01] chicken pot pie. On paper, the concept sounds amazing, but there's two main problems I see in chicken pot pie that often leave me disappointed. Number one, the puff pastry steams from the inside up. So, you get a crispy top, but inside

[00:15] you get a soggy puff pastry, a little doughy, a little gummy, no good. Number two, it's often made with chicken breast that we often then boil to the point of death. I've been thinking for years about how I would fix these problems,

[00:28] and my solution is instead of baking everything together, why don't I make the ultimate crispy puff pastry bowl and serve the delicious pot pie filling with braised chicken thighs straight inside of it. So, finally you can eat a chicken

[00:43] pot pie, perfectly crisp puff pastry, perfectly tender and juicy chicken, no pie. First step we need to do is prep the puff pastry bowls, cuz once we work with them, it's going to soften and we need

[00:57] it to firm up with all the butter in there in the fridge before we bake them. that we do. We're going to need a bigger boat. So, I've got here two bowls. Ironically, they're Binging with Babish bowls. He sent me them years ago. I'm

[01:10] This is where we're going to drape our puff pastry over to create the bowl. And here, this is a really good brand of puff pastry. You probably will never see me make puff pastry from scratch. This is an upgraded product that I've seen on

[01:23] the market recently, and this is just fine. Now, this has been sitting out, so it's nice and pliable, which is what we're going to need it to be. First board. Try and distribute that flour all over

[01:36] All we got to do is roll it out just a little [music] bit. cut it in half. Now, we can basically just try and see if we need to roll it

[01:51] out a little thinner or wider. And that looks kind of good to me. We're going to cut the trim right there, and I want to really mold it to the bowl. Slide it onto the sheet tray, and we can repeat with the other side.

[02:07] square it off, and then we can make a lattice. Just cut little thin strips. And we lay four down one way, dab a little water at the edge, >> dab on some interchanging ones like that, and then layer the other one on

[02:22] top. Flip it and press so that water should have glued it together. And then you just sort of braid them, interchange them like that.

[02:34] trim the excess. Now, the only other thing left to do is the flat surface of the bowl, we're just going to prick it so it doesn't kind of pop up too much and we have a flat bottom for the bowl to stand on. Now,

[02:50] the dough goes back into the fridge to chill before we egg wash it and bake it. Now, I'm dragon today, and while this cooks, I need a pick-me-up. But I can't shooting. But I can still get my pick-me-up thanks to our sponsor today,

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[04:50] is two parts onion to one part carrot and one part celery. Cut the top off the onion, cut it in half, peel off the layers. Then we're going to take the onion and we're going to look for the lines naturally running across the

[05:03] surface, and we're going to take our knife and follow those lines even sort I'm going to go in at the bottom at a little bit of an angle, and then as I make my way across the top of the onion, straightening it out until I start to

[05:17] get to the other curve, and I start to angle the knife down towards the center again. And you go across it and dice it, and everything's a nice, perfect little dice. Now, that's one part onion.

[05:30] Peel it real quick. We're going to cut it where it tapers, stand it up, slice it into little planks, and then cut those into strips, and then dice them up. For the celery, trim the dry edges, cut

[05:43] in half, and cut those halves in half again. Each stalk cut into four pieces. I'm just cut those up into a dice. Now, that's a mirepoix. And then the garlic, just like always, slice it in half, peel back the skins, [music]

[05:57] Then I've got a little bundle of rosemary and thyme. Not too much. I want to take a string. I'm just going to start to wrap it around, create a nice tight bundle, and then tie it to the excess. And then just cut it so we can

[06:12] tie it to the rim of the bowl. You're also going to need about 1/2 cup of frozen corn and 1/2 cup of frozen peas. A cup, whatever you want. I got to use my stuff. Then, of course, we have our chicken thighs. Important to note, I

[06:25] grew up a dark meat chicken hater, simply because my family didn't know how like a chicken breast to the same temperature till like it's done, and you're worried of overcooking it, you're going to eat rubber chicken. However, if

[06:38] would overcook a short rib or a pork butt, until it breaks down and all the muscle fibers get tender, that is [music] when dark meat becomes succulent and juicy. A southern fried chicken wing or thigh that melts [music] in your

[06:52] it apart. So, what we're going to do instead of use breast, we're going to use thighs. We're going to braise them whole in the mixture and then shred them but this is going to allow us depth of flavor. We're going to get some browning

[07:06] just pulling [music] a rotisserie chicken and adding to it. So, add some dredge it in a little flour before we sear them. Then we're going to be deglazing with some sherry wine, some dry sherry wine. That's going to add

[07:20] depth of flavor, a little mhm in the back. We're going to be using some like. And of course, you can use milk, but I like it a little thicker, so it's not going to bake it into the oven. We're just going to be [music] almost

[07:33] serving it more like a soup in a bowl. So, we're using heavy cream to make it lightened out by the stock. So, we're going to get a little flour to dredge the chicken, season it, and 3 Tbsp for our roux, which will also require us to

[07:47] add 3 Tbsp of butter. Now, we're ready to cook. Now, since we're using chicken that is skinless, we're going to season the chicken thighs, and then very it, the chicken won't really develop any sort of crust. Then, into a hot

[08:02] preheated Dutch oven coated with some olive oil, we're going to add the chicken and sear it really well on that first side until it's nice and golden brown. And this is the benefit of cooking the chicken in the pot is flavor

[08:15] [music] development, fond development on the bottom of the pan that's going to make this chicken pot pie filling more delicious than an average chicken pot separately. Once the first side is browned, flip it.

[08:37] ahead and sear off the remaining chicken thighs. we can remove them from the pot. To the pot, we're going to add the mirepoix,

[08:52] going to cook it for about 2 to 3 minutes or until the vegetables become soft and translucent. After a few minutes, add the sliced garlic, and allow that garlic to soften, brown around the edges, and become fragrant.

[09:05] To that, we're going to add about 2 Tbsp of unsalted butter, both to help the necessary for the roux we're going to build later. Once all the vegetables are soft, then we can go ahead and add in the flour, and we're going to stir that

[09:20] going to stir that constantly to cook that raw taste out of the flour. After a minute or two, when the flour and the roux is lightly browned, we're going to deglaze with some dry sherry wine. And you're going to see it thicken almost

[09:35] instantly, but keep stirring it and lower the heat so we can cook out all of and that alcohol doesn't burn your nostrils, then we can start to add in the chicken stock, roughly about two to three cups. Then we can go ahead and

[09:49] start to work in about a half pint or so of heavy cream. And then I'm going to tie my little herb bundle to the pot so the chicken back to the pot and we're

[10:01] burner and we're going to cook this for at least 1 hour or more importantly until the chicken is tender and able to easily be shredded. And we don't want right now, but we don't want it to be too thin either. It's going to reduce

[10:17] but not by a ton. So I might add a touch more stock to compensate for the longer cook now, but just keep an eye out on it and stir it constantly, cover it, and let this go for an hour. Whenever I braise anything, I do just like to let

[10:30] it sit off the stove, covered, and just relax, absorb the liquid, all the relax, absorb the liquid, all the flavor, get even more tender, and retain more moisture. So while that chills for a little bit, we can get started on our

[10:43] now chilled puff pastry. It should be firm, shouldn't be soft like it used to be. Now we just need an egg wash. One egg, you just want to beat it really well, and we're just going to then take our egg wash and brush it on the

[10:56] surface, get it nice and everywhere so we get a nice golden brown. Now we've got our oven that's been preheating at 400 degrees. Pop these guys in. That should take about 30 minutes or so. Again, we're looking for

[11:12] the puffing around the edges, golden brown color, and that's really going to be when we determine when to take this out. Now after the chicken has relaxed, out. Now after the chicken has relaxed, we can go ahead and remove it.

[11:30] well. Now trust me, handling the chicken this way is going to be so much better. Cooking it in all that liquid, succulent. So, now you can let this cool. You can take two forks and just start pulling, just like you would pull

[11:43] pork. You could chop them up into cubes, however you want to treat them. We just want to break it down, fill out the pot. You could just glove up and then start to really just shred it into shards. And this in a taco or something would be

[11:56] amazing. Now, before we add that back in, this tastes amazing. It is rich. acidity to this, I have a little Dijon mustard in a bowl. And now, sometimes when you add Dijon mustard to a sauce, it can become a little split. So, if we

[12:11] take some of the cooking liquid and add it to the mustard, we can start to almost make like a slurry with it so that it incorporates better into the sauce. Then we add that into the mix. [music] It just wakes it up, adds a

[12:24] brightness. It's a nice touch. Now, in with the chicken, with the chicken, in with the corn and the peas, and stir >> Now, we need to get this back onto the stove and allow the frozen peas and

[12:39] carrots? Frozen peas and corn to cook a little bit. They're cooked, we just want mixture hot ready for the puff pastry. Now, I've got some fresh chives. I'm going to roll them up towards the bottom. I'm going to trim off the edges.

[12:53] Then we want to cut really fine mince of chives for garnish. And then after about 35 minutes or so, you've got these beauties. I mean, are you kidding me? need to let this cool for a minute. Here's our lattice. It's cute. Gives it

[13:08] the illusion of pie, you know, at the end, just sticking out. Now, all I have to do is taste, check for seasoning. Needs salt, and then I finish with a little Parmesan cheese, grated in. That's the consistency, nice and thick,

[13:21] creamy, not clumpy. It's still kind of light cuz [music] it's mainly made up of >> [music] >> Look how beautiful. And now the hard part, we got to remove this. Very gently, use a little pastry, and just

[13:36] going to gently [snorts] just try and release it. Now everything This should be airy, fluffy, and crisp all the way through. all the way through. Oh, no! I smashed my lattice. Oh, I got

[13:50] to do a new one. Okay, I baked a new one, potentially a better one. Problem [music] averted. First thing I want to do is grate some Parmesan cheese in the center just to kind of give a barrier of protection

[14:03] inside of the bowl. And with [music] the filling. >> [music] >> Finish with the chives.

[14:18] >> Finish with the chives. And then a little bit more parm.

[14:39] succulent, moist, tender, juicy [music] chicken stewed in like a velouté chicken chicken stewed in like a velouté chicken pot pie filling, extra crispy. pot pie filling, extra crispy. In case you want to dip it.

[14:55] from the corn and the peas, a little acidity from the mustard. It's just a beautiful [music] rendition on a classic dish. And for you texture freaks out there like me, it's picture perfect. It's just one of

[15:08] try. My recipe's going to be down in the description. Check out our Patreon videos get released a day early and ad-free. Plus, we have a cooking school separate from everything here, have a live stream, give you guys homework, and

[15:24] That's all that I have today. I'll see you next time. Until then, take care of you next time. Until then, take care of yourself and go feed yourself.