How to Make the Ultimate Comfort Chicken Pot Pie and Cowboy Cookies

today on cook's country christy and bridget reveal the secrets to perfect double crushed chicken pot pie jack challenges julia to a tasting of peanut butter and ashley makes julia a classic version of cowboy cookies that's all right here on cook's country [Music] pot pies date all the way back to the 5th century bc when the greeks were cooking artacryus now that's a dish of meat baked in an open pastry round 300 years later the romans added a top crust and things got a little weird they baked everything between two crusts including live birds wow okay the popeyes that landed in america in the 1700s were a bit more utilitarian they were seen more as a means to use up leftovers until the 20th century when frozen dinners became popular and by 1955 americans were buying 150 million pounds of frozen meat pot pies a year well that's a lot but nothing absolutely nothing can beat scratch cooking so christy's going to show us how to build a double crust chicken pot pie from the bottom up let's go inside [Music] now when i say scratch cooking that doesn't mean that every single component of the recipe has to be homemade and i think a wise cook always should pick their battles speaking of wise cooks i've got christy here she's going to show us this amazing double crust chicken pot pie we are making a homemade pie right now we're not using leftovers but we are going to use one ingredient that's going to save us a lot of time and no one will be the wiser a frozen pot pie [Laughter] never never never so we'll start with the crust okay i have half a cup of sour cream that's chilled and i'm adding one large egg that i've also beaten it's going to add some great flavor and it makes it really easy to roll out this crust so now that that's done we can start with the flour i have two and a half cups of all-purpose flour in here and i'm adding one and a half teaspoons of salt we'll just blend this for about three seconds just to get everything mixed together okay okay now i have 12 tablespoons of unsalted butter i've cut this into half inch pieces and chilled it so it's nice and firm before we start all right now i'll pulse this about 10 pulses just to get the butter broken down so it's about pea-sized pieces okay okay like i said this is going to be a tender crust rather than a flaky crust so the size of the butter doesn't matter quite as much now i'm just going to add half of this sour cream mixture to the mixer bowl now i'll pulse this about five times just to get everything sort of mixed together now i'm just going to add the rest of it so we'll go another 10 pulses to make sure that this is all combined okay now the sour cream is going to help make everything easier to roll out but it's also adding a nice tangy flavor okay so you can see it's starting to come together i don't want to keep pulsing this in the food processor so i'll just take it out and knead it together a little bit i'm just going to lightly flour my workspace you definitely have some wetter bits sure so we'll just bring this all together so i can just knead it a little bit i'm not kneading it like it's bread but i just want to make sure that it's all cohesive cohesive all right so that looks pretty cohesive and i'll just use my bench scraper because this is a double crest pie so we'll just split it right down the middle and i'll shape these into disks it's a little tacky but it's not sticky and you can see it's not sticking to the counter at all you don't want to mess around with it too much but if you have a nice round shape now it makes it easier later okay so i have some plastic wrap down here this will hydrate further when we put it in the refrigerator so now i'll just chill this for at least an hour you can put this in the refrigerator and make it up to two days ahead or you can freeze it for up to two months so our dough has been properly chilled for about an hour i let it sit out for about 10 minutes just so it would soften a little bit and now we're ready so we'll just give ourselves a little flour sprinkle and we know that this dough is pretty well hydrated so it can handle a little extra flour yeah so i like to use a tapered rolling pin put the end of the dowel next to the center of the dough and just kind of roll around and let the taper of the rolling pin work for me and i'm rotating the dough constantly so it's not sticking right i kind of go like that so see how i'm turning it twisting yeah and then see if it does start to crack that's okay because as you get a little bit bigger circle you can patch that up and then i'm turning it with each turn as well so we're going for 12 inches okay okay i am at 12 inches and i believe i am as well so we need to get the pie from our work surface to the pie plate first okay i think the easiest way is to use your rolling pin as a lifter as a crane and just gently i'm going to try to get it centered now we don't want to stretch this so you know we'll lift and let the pie crust settle down into this nine inch pie plate so 12 inch circle nine inch pie plate obviously we're going to have a little overhang and that's good again not stretching at all just make sure that it has all fallen down in so you have a nice tight corner if you stretch the pie dough into the pie plate that's when they shrink back right and everything we're doing here is is to prevent that from happening that's why we chilled it before and we'll chill it again so i'll just cover this with some plastic wrap we'll put this on a rim baking sheet that i've already lined with some parchment paper so we'll pop these in the refrigerator and let these chill for about 30 minutes okay we have rolled these out and we've developed some gluten so we want them to relax and get a little chilled before we fill the pie and put it in the oven so now it's time to make the filling and we want this to be savory satisfying and i can think of no better way to get there than by starting with some butter i like the way you think so i have four tablespoons of unsalted butter in a large saucepan over medium heat you can hear it is melted yes so we'll start building the base and we're starting with our classic trio this is one onion that's been finely chopped which is a cup so we'll add that and now i have two carrots that i've peeled and cut into quarter inch pieces this is about two-thirds of a cup okay and this is two ribs of celery and i've also cut this into quarter inch pieces so we have nice little bite size nice and that's about half a cup so we'll add that with some salt and pepper this is a half teaspoon each salt and pepper we'll cook it for about six minutes until the vegetables have softened but we're not looking for browning here so as you can see our vegetables are nice and soft lovely so now we'll add some thickener i have six tablespoons of all-purpose flour and i'll just sprinkle that over the top and we'll just cook this until we have a nice golden shade just to cook out any of that raw flour flavor just one to two minutes okay well this color looks good so now i'll add the liquid now the first is two and a quarter cups of chicken broth but i'm also adding half a cup of half and half this is just going to add richness to balance out the savory so i'm going to turn the heat up to medium high and we want to bring this to a boil okay this sauce is starting to boil so i have one small russet potato i've cut this into quarter inch pieces and that's one cup of potato and i'm also adding a teaspoon of minced fresh thyme and i'll turn the heat down to medium and we'll let this simmer what we're looking for is to get those potatoes nice and tender but we'll also let the sauce thicken up a bit and that's going to take about eight minutes okay so bridget we have about a minute left on the sauce part of the filling right so now it's time to talk about the elephant in the room which is the fact that you haven't roasted a chicken cooked a chicken poached chicken i haven't but that doesn't mean we're not going to have chicken okay we're using the most convenient thing that you can find and that's a rotisserie chicken it's great they're convenient you can find them at grocery stores your local market this was a two and a half pound rotisserie chicken and you need to be able to get about three cups of meat from it right so the size of the chicken is important i've shredded most of it just want them in bite-sized pieces okay so this looks great i'm going to turn off the heat so now i'm going to add my chicken and the final element i have three quarters of a cup of frozen peas they're also going to help cool down the filling otherwise you'd melt the crust so just get this mixed together you have put the chicken back in chicken pot pie because that is a lot of chicken in there and i love it let's go over to the pie okay so we have our fully chilled crust ready for us this is going to be a nice mounded pie it really looks beautiful so now we'll go ahead and we'll get the top crust same trick with the rolling pin we'll very gently drape this trying to match it up lovely obviously we made the crust a little bigger than we needed to so now i'll trim it we want to trim it about half an inch beyond the edge of the pie plate yes i know that that's from the tip of my thumb to the base of my thumbnail you've made a few pies i have well done thank you so now we'll go around and we'll just pinch the edges together to create a nice seal we don't want any of that deliciousness escaping now i'll fold it under will create kind of a lip okay so now it's time to crimp you can crimp however you like i love to flute the edges they look nice and it provides a really great anchor to hold the pie crust onto the edge of the pie plate okay so i'm just using two fingers in my one hand and one finger in my other hand to make this nice indentation and my flute kind of stands straight up and it just sits right on the edge of the pie crust that's going to keep it from sinking down in beautiful thank you now we have a lot of liquid in there and as that heats up it's going to create steam the steam needs somewhere to go so i'm just going to cut four two inch slices little slits in the top little slits about two inches we're going to put an egg wash on this to make it nice and shiny but i'm going to move this over onto my rimmed baking sheet so it'll catch any drips so i'm just going to brush this all over to kind of lacquer and that's just egg this is just one large egg that i've beaten and make sure that you get in there because this just adds such beautiful shine do you see any spots i do not okay so the oven's ready to go okay i put the rack on the very lowest position and heated the oven to 450 degrees we'll put it in for 18 to 20 minutes and that first stage is going to make sure that we get a really nice set bottom okay and the top's going to start to brown a little bit then we're going to drop the temperature to 375 degrees rotate the whole baking sheet and then let the pie bake for another 12 to 15 minutes and at that point we're going to see this really nice golden brown color forming oh my goodness that's a pie it is a pie indeed i love the color notice the sheen that we got from the egg wash now we want it to stay looking fantastic the only other way to get that without waiting is to have to add a lot of extra flour so we have to wait we're going to wait 45 minutes it'll be worth it five four three two one that's 45. now it's time to slice into it i'm really gonna appreciate it okay and i kind of like the slits that we cut sort of create a little road map for our pie slices tracing yes oh my goodness it pleases you i it pleases me all right i do want to try the bottom crust especially because a double crusted pot pie with a bottom crust that's not soggy is a very rare thing that is cooked through absolutely the filling is creamy and rich but it's not stodgy at all every single bite is full of chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken and then crust melts in your mouth thanks christy this amazing chicken pie it starts with an easy to roll out dough cut butter into flour then add a sour cream and egg mixture in two stages divide the dough into refrigerate and roll out and then fit one dough around into a pie plate the filling base starts with sauteed aromatics flour broth and half and half plus a little potato stir in shredded rotisserie chicken top with the second dough round and bake let cool for an agonizing 45 minutes and then serve so from cook's country the can it be done yes it can it's the amazing double crust chicken pot pie thanks christy my pleasure peanut butter can be found in 89 of all american households and the average u.s kid eats over 1500 pb j sandwiches before they graduate high school so the question for jack today is which brand of peanut butter is best yeah this is going to be an interesting taste test because i think this has a lot to do with what you grow up with so i've got three samples to represent the sort of three different styles so you can start digging in with the notion that i'm going to do most of the talking because your mouth is going to be glued and shut very quickly so when i was a kid when you were a kid there really two choices either it was a natural peanut butter made with just peanuts and salt or it was made with sugar and hydrogenated fat so hydrogenated fat is oil that's been treated with chemicals so that it's solid at room temperature so you get a smooth creamy peanut butter the natural peanut butters with just the salt and peanuts they're oily they're greasy they separate they're also not sweet so there's now a new category out there confusingly also called natural that uses palm oil instead of hydrogenate oil and so palm oil the reason they're doing this is because it is naturally solid at room temperature so they have no chemicals involved so they can call it natural they are also sweetened so it's basically very similar to the hydrogenated peanut butters in terms of consistency they just get there a different way so i have a little visual i could pour this one yeah so well i'm gonna i'm gonna do some pouring here so this is the traditional peanut butter with the hydrogenated uh fat you see it's creamy it's stiff this is what i would call a truly natural peanut butter made with just peanuts you see it's made a big mess here it's going to eventually pour the big thing that we found besides the fact that you can make a very different sandwich very different flavor profile is these bake totally differently so when we made peanut butter cookies what happened was the peanut butters that had just the peanuts and the salt they didn't spread very much and so you got a really cakey kind of dry cookie that really wasn't all that great the ones made with the palm oil they spread too much so you got these little crispy almost candy like peanut butter cookies they weren't bad but they were not sort of soft and chewy and this is all about the amount of saturated fat in each one of these which varies and so and that determines how much spread you get in a cookie and so it's a really interesting test i've done a lot of talking yup tell me what you think of the free samples so these were very different to me this one it didn't even taste like peanuts to me it tasted like it wanted to be peanut butter it had the right sort of texture mostly but it was very bland okay um this one surprised me with how peanuty it was this is the kind i grew up with those very messy sandwiches on whole wheat bread with you know low sugar homemade jam right and the peanut butter was on your shirt it's cool right because you know it doesn't make a very nice neat sandwich it does not so i grew up with this and i really thought this was going to have more peanut flavor than this one but i was shocked that it didn't i was ready to really love this one but this one i love this one so you're abandoning your mother here no no mom i'm not all right just to be clear but you're having a change of heart i am and plus it's so smooth it's almost it feels like a guilty pleasure when you like a peanut butter like this all right you want to see where you're going yeah all right ready yeah ready so you chose the overall winner this is the skippy the studio audience this is their favorite the expert panel this was their favorite this is the best of the classic sweetened hydrogenated really creamy you're right it's very peanutty surprisingly so so where do you want to go next let's go to this one so this is from a company named adams this was our favorite of the simplest kind with no sugar no additional fat we thought it was a good choice if you're somebody who really doesn't want sweetness for me it's the sweetener i don't really want any sugar in it the texture i get the peel the creamy texture but i don't really want a sweet peanut butter you're gonna add jelly anyway yeah it didn't really make sense to me why you want sweetness in the peanut butter gotcha and then this one which was absolutely terrible well i would say it wasn't that terrible i mean you know this was our favorite of the natural kind made with the palm oils from peter pan i mean it was third overall so i wouldn't say it was terrible you didn't like it um it it it performed worse once you baked it i really don't want to see what you would think about the cookies that this thing made because it was fine in a sandwich julia i'm sure it was so there you have it for the nuttiest flavored peanut butter go with skippy creamy peanut butter at 2.69 for a 16.3 ounce jar [Applause] [Music] every four years family circle magazine has a cookie contest in honor of the presidential election see they have the spouses of each candidate submit their favorite cookie recipe and their readers get to vote now in 2000 laura bush's recipe for cowboy cookies beat out tipper gore's gingersnaps by a landslide and this cookie became very popular and today ashley's going to show us how to make them all right so these cookies are no joke imagine everything is bigger in texas right so these cookies are large and sharp they're presidential they are presidential so let's get started with the dry ingredients here i have one and a quarter cups of all-purpose flour three quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder half a teaspoon of baking soda and half a teaspoon of salt just gonna whisk this all right move on down over here now on to the wet ingredients so here i have one and a half cups of light brown sugar 12 tablespoons of unsalted butter and this has been melted and cooled this is one large egg plus one egg yolk and one teaspoon of vanilla extract so i'm just going to whisk this until combined as well so now i'm just going to add the dry to the wet all at once and whisk this until just incorporated all right so that is just combined so here we have one and a quarter cups of old-fashioned rolled oats now you can use quick or instant oats but just don't use the thick rolled oats gotcha and here we have one cup of toasted pecans which i chopped course one cup of sweetened shredded coconut and two-thirds of a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips now i just want to get a spoon and eat this right now using my rubber spatula i'm just going to combine this fold everybody in together so now let's get to portioning okay i went ahead and sprayed this quarter cup measure with some vegetable oil spray so this is a rimless baking sheet usually we use a rimmed baking sheet but because they are so large the cookies needed the room to expand as they baked they're definitely going to spread out quite a bit in fact we're going to have eight cookies per sheet and we're going to space them two and a half inches away from each other so that they have their room to grow all right here we have the last cookie i am gonna take any remaining dough and just add it on to any of the cookies that look like they were a little bit skimpy a little skimpy all right so the cookies are ready to go into the oven now number one i do want to mention that we are going to be pulling these when they look a little pale and raw in the center but set around the edges i'm going to bake these cookies one sheet at a time i have an oven that's been preheating at 350 degrees and we're going to bake them for 15 to 17 minutes rotating the sheet halfway through baking man they did get really big oh yes all right so you can see it's a little pale and puffy in the center and the exterior is just beginning to set oh yeah so i'm going to rely on carryover cooking for these cookies i'm going to leave them on the sheet for five minutes before taking them off so now i'm just gonna take the second sheet to the oven and again 15 to 17 minutes rotating the sheet halfway through baking all right so our first batch of cookies is all set for us on that platter this is our second batch of cookies it's been resting on the sheet for five minutes now see how different that looks such a transformation that five minutes gives it when you cool all right so i'm just going to transfer the cookies to a wire rack and just let them cool completely i mean they're bigger than my palm all right let's dig in oh i love that when a cookie does that oh yeah means it's chewy on the inside [Music] all right let's see how tender we got it that's tender it has such flavor it's the brown sugar it almost has this caramely notes in the background and you get a little chocolate a little coconut a little of those nuts this is good the edges are nice and crisp so there's a real contrast between the center and the edge i can see why these won the contest for sure ashley these are great thank you you're welcome so if you want to make these winning presidential cookies start by mixing all the dry ingredients together in one bowl and all of the wet ingredients including melted butter in a separate bowl combine them together then add oats pecans coconut and chocolate chips using a quarter cup measure portion out the dough onto a rimless baking sheet and bake them one tray at a time for just 15 minutes from cook's country an award-winning recipe for cowboy cookies you know i thought these cookies were big but i'm almost ready for another thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 434,447

Rating: 4.9423938 out of 5

Keywords: comfort food, chicken pot pie, cowboy cookies, cookies, cooks country, cooks illustrated, americas test kitchen

Id: GWsA3BnNX-4

Length: 23min 49sec (1429 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020