- 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. Hit that like button and
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