Experimenting with Chicken Pot Pie

IMHO FOODIES Beehive is one of the under-appreciated tribes on HIVE. This tribe shares recipes, food and restaurant reviews. The tribe supplements rewards with the venerable FOODIE token on #hive-engine .

Unfortunately, food communities have one problem. A decent cook knows how to cook food from a recipe. The best chefs don't produce original content ... good chefs consistently produce good food that people love to eat.

A world class chef set on creating a recipe book might only produce a dozen recipes a year.

HIVE wants people who post more regularly than that.

An experimental chef can produce a tonne of posts a month. Experimental food can is photogenic. It makes for interesting #photography.

Unfortunately, experimental food is iffy at best.

I happen to be cooking for an elderly individual who loves food cooked from scratch. I've been doing cooking experiments throughout the year. I write original posts, but I don't publish them because the food I produce is not restaurant quality.

Yesterday I experimented with Chicken Pot Pie, took pictures for a post.

Chicken Pot Pie

I have a confession. I like chicken pot pie.

In school I considered a Swanson Chicken pot pie a treat that I could afford once a month or so.

When I am lucky to have a job that paid over minimum wage, I would occasionally sneak a Marie Callender's pie. These currently cost $5 when they are on sale.

I am cooking food from scratch. I watched a dozen youtube videos on making chicken pot pie. The best recipes cook the crust and pie separately.

No Roll Pie Crust

I discovered several videos about creating a "No Roll Pie Crust." One simply puts flour, oil and water into a pie pan. Mix it with a fork. Even it out at the bottom of the pan.

The first picture shows the ingredients for the crust. Since I wanted a savory crust, I used olive oil and did not add sugar. IF this was a sweet pie, I would use melted butter and add sugar. The ingredients were two cups sugar, oil, salt and water. I have an egg for making an egg wash.

The second picture shows the dough after adding olive oil.

The next picture shows the dough smushed into the bottom of the pie pan. The person for whom I am cooking wants a low crust to filling ratio; so I did not create a top for the pie.

I want the crust to stay crisp; so I added a generous egg wash to the pie crust and blind baked the pie crust. Because I used a thick egg glaze, I could not use pie weights.

I really like this "No Roll" approach to a crust because there is less food waste. Even better there is only one pan and one fork to clean. I was able to clean the fork by eating the dough on the fork and finishing it with the dishes.

Making the Pie Contents

I tend to use different ingredients for each meal I make.

I go to the store and buy what is on sale. I occasionally add expensive ingredients.

This next picture shows the starting ingredients for the pie. I used raw chicken that was diced by the butcher. A half cup of flour, about 6 ounces of butter. Most of the videos I saw used heavy cream. The store was out of the discount brand heavy cream; so I bought some butter milk. The butter milk added a sour hint to the pie. It would be interesting to add a sweet ingredient as it would give the pie a sweet and sour taste.

I bought some expensive chicken bone broth.

I think the best way to approach this recipe would be to buy one of those discounted roasted chickens found at Winco or Costco. One could shred the chicken and make broth from the bones.

Unfortunately, Winco is 15 miles away!

I decided to add a potato, mushrooms and frozen green beans. I also added some black pepper, cayenne pepper and other spices that are not seen in the picture. I did not add celery as I wanted the a pie filling that was easy to slice.

The cooking went as follows:

I sautéed the diced onions in the butter until they started to brown. I pushed that to the side and sautéed the chicken. I added the flour and then added the bone broth.

I let that simmer a bit to assure the chicken was cooked thoroughly. I then added the buttermilk and the rest of the ingredients including a can of mushrooms and the peas.

Baking the Concoction

The next picture shows the prebaked pie crust coasted with a thick egg wash on the left and my fried pie filling on the left.

I realized that I had too much filling!

I live in a house that is just about a mile in elevation. My reported cooking time does not work in most of the world.

I preheated the oven to 365°. I placed the pie in the oven then spent the next ten minutes running around searching for my timer.

I don't know what happened to it. It is supposed to be by the stove. I bet that someone took it off to time something.

So, I noted the time on the clock in the kitchen and pulled it out of the oven after a half hour. The internal temperature of the pie was 165°; So, I figured that was good.

The next picture shows the finished pie cooling on the stove top:

Just prior to writing this post, I took an outdoor picture of the pie to show that gelled well and cut cleanly.

It looks like I will get 10 full balanced meals from this recipe.

The Ingredient List

Folks in the FOODIES Beehive like to see recipes. I lack the skill to cook to a recipe. Here is an ingredient list for this pie.

As I said, I would like to try this with a rotisserie chicken and broth from said chicken. I also switch things around.

• A cup and a half of flour
• tsp of Salt
• a couple tablespoons of olive oil
• about a cup of water
• egg for egg wash

Pie Filling

• A package of chicken
• an onion
• Three small carrots
• A potato
• A box of buttermilk
• a box of Chicken broth
• a half cup of flour
• the remainder of the egg from the egg wash
• three garlic cloves
• turmeric
• black pepper
• Parsley
• Sage
• Time
• a cup of peas.

Conclusion

I liked the "no roll pie crust" as it reduced food waste and used only one pan. The crust didn't burn to the pan; so cleanup should be easy.

Since I used fresh foods and cooked from scratch, I consider this to be a healthy meal.

Since I used different ingredients each time I cook each pie will taste differently. Since people want consistency, I suspect that most people would prefer the chicken pot pie found in the grocery freezer.

I added the #pob and #vyb tags because I thought through each ingredient. I thought I would end by asking which is better: Food cooked by a professional chef from a proven restaurant or something made by a person who watched some youtube videos; then made things up on the fly?