Skip to main content

Chicken Potpie - Ad Hoc at Home


***There are certain dishes that conjure up memories from childhood. I can remember eating the Swanson's chicken potpies as a child, just as Mr. Keller mentions in his cookbook. We'd pop those into the oven, and dinner would soon be ready. Those are really the only chicken potpies that I've ever really eaten...until now.

I couldn't pass up the recipe for Chicken Potpie in Ad Hoc at Home. It sounded like the perfect, comforting dish for a cold winter night. This potpie certainly takes more effort than popping a frozen pie in the oven, but I can promise you that it's worth the effort!

There are several things that I did to simplify Mr. Keller's recipe. The directions say to cook the potatoes, carrots, and onions in separate saucepans. I cooked them all together in one pot, and I even added the celery during the last few minutes of cooking. I also did not strain the bechamel sauce. This saved many dirty pots at the end of the night!

I did cook an entire roasting chicken for this recipe. I boiled it in water, along with celery, carrots, onions, and herbs. This made the chicken taste perfect and guess what...I had an entire pot of delicious chicken stock that I separated into different containers and stored in the freezer! However, you could further simplify things by simply purchasing a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store.

I did not use Thomas Keller's recipe for Pie Crust. I used Melissa d'Arabian's recipe from the Potato-Bacon Torte that I posted recently. That crust is so amazing...and easy! It worked PERFECTLY here! I've included a link to the crust recipe below.

I hope you enjoy this recipe...Bon Appetit!***


Chicken Potpie
Source: Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller; Pages 24 - 25

Ingredients:
Basic Pie Crust (Recipe can be found HERE)

Filling:
1 cup 1/2-inch pieces red-skinned potatoes
1 1/4 cups 1/2-inch pieces carrots (cut on the diagonal)
12 white pearl onions
3 bay leaves
3 thyme sprigs
24 black peppercorns
1 1/4 cups 1/2-inch pieces of celery (cut on the diagonal)
2 cups shredded cooked chicken

Bechamel:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped thyme
Pinch of cayenne

1 egg, beaten

Directions:
Roll out the dough, place one piece in a 9 or 10 inch pie plate and the second on a baking sheet, and refrigerate.

Put the potatoes, carrots, and onions in separate small saucepans with water to cover and add 1 bay leaf, 1 thyme sprig, and 8 peppercorns to each pan. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat and simmer until just tender, 8 to 10 minutes.

Drain the vegetables, discard the bay, thyme, and peppercorns, and spread on a baking sheet. Cut the onions in half.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a medium bowl with ice water. Blanch the celery until just crisp-tender, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Drain, transfer to the ice bath, and chill just until cold. Drain and add to the baking sheet with the other vegetables.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for 2 to 3 minutes; adjust the heat as needed so that the mixture does not brown. Whisk in the milk, lower the heat to keep the bechamel at a gentle simmer, and cook, whisking often, until the sauce has thickened and reduced to about 2 cups, 30 to 40 minutes; move the whisk over the bottom and into the corners of the pan to be sure the bechamel doesn't burn.

Position the oven racks in the lower third and center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Strain the bechamel through a fine-mesh conical strainer into a spouted measuring cup. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, thyme, and cayenne.

Remove both doughs from the refrigerator.

Scatter the vegetables and chicken into the pie shell. Pour the bechamel over them. At this point, if the top crust is too hard to shape, let it rest at room temperature for a few minutes. Moisten the rim of pie shell with some of the beaten egg. Cover the filling with the top crust and press the edges of the dough together to seal. Trim away the excess dough that overhangs the rim. Brush the top crust with the egg. Cut a small vent in the center of the dough with a small cutter or the tip of a paring knife to allow steam to escape.

Bake on the lower oven rack until the crust is a rich golden brown, 50 minutes to 1 hour. If necessary, move the pie to the center rack during the last 10 minutes of baking to brown the crust. On the other hand, if crust is browning too quickly, cover with aluminum foil. Transfer to a cooling rack and let rest for 10 minutes.

Cut the potpie into 6 wedges and serve warm.

Comments

Jo said…
This looks absolutely yummilicious. The filing looks so moist and the pastry .. hmm flaky, flaky!
This looks amazingly good! I was looking forward to trying your pie crust recipe - no way I can put it off any longer! Thanks for some great ideas....
Susan
Memória said…
Your pot pie looks amazing! I love how rich the innards are. Beautiful crust as well. I'll have to try this one out.
Lidia said…
It looks very good!!
I'll have to try it, sure!!
Karen W said…
Looks soooo good, and I think I probably know the answer to this, but could you cut the bechamel sauce in half? I'm really trying to avoid a run to the store!
Celeste said…
Hi Karen!
I actually ended up with extra bechamel sauce, so you could probably get by with half...if you had to.
Celesta said…
Oh my gosh. We are snowed in here in Raleigh and thought this was the perfect dish. It was fantastic. I am now throwing out all my other chicken pot pie recipes. thanks for sharing.
Lauren said…
I have just eaten this for dinner tonight and I am sooo happy I made it! It was a bit more time consuming than what I usually make for dinner but well worth it. I even have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, so I am one happy girl!

Popular posts from this blog

Cream Cheese Banana Nut Bread - Southern Living

***There seriously aren't very many things that smell better than Banana Nut Bread baking in the oven.   Don't you agree?  This recipe for Cream Cheese Banana Nut Bread from Southern Living magazine was one of the very first recipes that I added to this blog...back in November 2007!  In fact, I came across it when I worked for the magazine as a Marketing Intern.  Back then, I didn't have a photo for every recipe, and the blog post was simply the recipe and nothing else.  Because this is my go-to recipe for Banana Nut Bread (and because it is so amazing!), I thought that it deserved a little more attention.  This is quite honestly some of the best Banana Nut Bread that I've ever had.  An entire 8oz. package of cream cheese is added right to the batter, along with 4 mashed bananas.  The cream cheese adds so much to this recipe, with an incredibly moist texture being the main component.  Plus, the roasted pecans are the perfect addition.  Roasting the nuts brings out

My Favorite Quiche!

***It's not often that a recipe is worthy of re-posting.  I think I've only done that once or twice in the entire time I've written this blog.  However, this is one of those rare occasions.  Back in 2009 when Brad and I went to Europe, we had the most amazing Quiche Lorraine at the incredible Les Deux Magots cafe in Paris.  It was delicious and was served alongside a yummy salad of fresh greens (Quiche Lorraine sur Salade Verte).  Oh, it was heaven on a plate!  It also didn't hurt that we were sitting on the patio of one of the most famous cafes in Paris, after all...haha.  The atmosphere and people-watching in that particular area are hard to beat. I'll never forget the elderly lady that was sitting at the table right next to us (the tables were situated pretty close together).  She was dressed to-the-nines, was all by herself, and was just the quintessential, classy Parisian lady.  I wish more than anything that I had tried to strike up a conversation with her

Absolutely Sinful Cinnamon Rolls

***Alrighty, here are the cinnamon rolls that I mentioned in my previous post. I put these together on Christmas Eve, and then baked them on Christmas morning. Let me just tell you...there's nothing quite like the smell of yummy cinnamon rolls wafting through the house on Christmas morning...ahhhhh...so wonderful! This is going to be a new tradition for us...fresh, homemade rolls on Christmas. I thought that I might try this recipe, and then maybe try a new one next year...until I found one that I really loved. However, I hit the jackpot on the first try! This is THE recipe that I'll always use. UPDATE:   Since originally writing this post in 2008, I've  made these cinnamon rolls every year for Christmas!  They are a holiday tradition that my family looks forward to all year!  You can see my other posts here, with lots more photos of these sinful cinnamon rolls: CHRISTMAS 2009 CHIRSTMAS 2010 CHRISTMAS 2011 The great thing was that I could prepare them on Christmas