Hey everyone, do you want to make the best
chicken pot pie you've ever tasted? The chicken pot pie of your dreams? The homey, comforty, classic that everybody craves in your family? I make it all the time, and it's so easy and it utilizes leftovers, and you can use it
with pork, or turkey, or lamb, or whatever you want to do. It's really, really, really,
versatile. We have an incredible library of recipes on AndrewZimmern.com in our
AZcooks video series. And Michelle Geyer, one of the most awarded pastry chefs in America, taught everybody how to make a really beautiful pie dough. And I'm just gonna scatter a little flour on my board, and scatter some flour on top
of this piece, so that we can roll this out and use it for our pie dough. We want
to roll this out thin enough to line our ovenware, and then we're gonna blind
bake it. How do we then get from this crazy beautiful piece of dough into
there? And the answer is really, really simple. We're gonna fold it, and then
we're gonna unfold it. And we're gonna press these corners, by the way we're
gonna put another piece of dough over the top. Baking paper, we want to very
gently lay this into our pan. I constantly use old, cheap dollar a pound black beans, you're just looking for something to weight this down, and hold it. So this little contraption, goes into the oven for 20 minutes or so, 350. Let's take our chicken out of the stock, And we want to pour off our chicken
stock, and see how much we have. We know when we get to the making of our filling,
exactly how much liquid were pouring in to make our sauce, and that will also
tell us how much room we need. First thing I want to do, is get my pan on the
stove because, while we're doing our chicken, we might as well get cooking. I'm going to throw in a couple tablespoons butter. I'm gonna use at least half a
bird in here, it depends how much meat comes off here. Take this breast meat, I'm just
dicing this, I want nice large pieces. So I'm using up lots of leftover vegetables, onion, leek, some fresh thyme. I just want to get some nice color on my alliums. I
like my chicken pot pie to have big cubes of fresh chicken, and a lot of
vegetables, and a beautiful chicken creamy sauce. So I think we've got the
right ratios here, now I just want to put some light caramelization on this, not a
lot. A little black pepper, carrot, celery, I'm gonna add some parsley leaves, now I'm going to add some butter, and flour, and make my roux and I'm just gonna put that right in the center, two and a half tablespoons. And by cooking my roux, I am
going to prevent the flour from clumping up. Then once that's incorporated into
that butter, start to spread that around. I have warm stock and I'm going to add it one cup at a time. And as I add it, it is going to thicken that sauce as it
comes to a boil. I mean, look at now it's like glueish paste, and we want that to
cook for a couple minutes. add our chicken, add our peas. So, we lose some liquid to evaporation, we have some liquid actually
being soaked up by the chicken. One thing that makes this a little rich and unctuous is the addition of a little bit of cream. Now remember, this is going under a dome
of pastry, so this is our last opportunity to season. Mmm Mmm Mmm Grab something handy to hold all these beans, but you can see this is browned on the edges,
it's nice and cooked in here, obviously hasn't browned, you don't want it to go
that far this would be burnt. But we have a nice, cooked, pie crust and we're just
going to start filling. As we start to get to the point where our solids are
near the top, get some spoonfuls that have a lot of sauce on there. We do the
same thing with the top, that we did for the bottom. Now, the first thing that I want to do, is
push this down until my raw dough meets the cooked dough. We just do you know,
every half inch or so. Just a little squeeze with the thumbs. And the most
important thing, two holes. And then, let's just make a little chimney, finish it
around your finger. Just so the steam has a place to vent and your dough doesn't
close. And then the last thing that I want to do, break my egg into my leftover cream. Don't put big globs of egg wash on. But make sure you paint the edges, and now this is gonna go back into our oven. You want to sit and rest for 10-15
minutes before you serve it. Let the bubbling stop, let everything
kind of relax, and all the rest of that. and this, it's just perfect. One portion for you, and portion for your friend, and the
delicious larger piece for me. Wow, so good! I mean the whole thing is just, it's just perfect.
