Salt Fat Acid Heat Chicken Pot Pie
Despite the shape and the overflow, it still looks pretty good
This recipe is another first for me, is it worth making on your own?
Time: 4 hours 30 minutes (over two days)
Difficulty: 2/5
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Ever since I got Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat and read through it, I knew that I wanted to make the chicken pot pie. I feel like I like chicken pot pie more than the average person, so having a recipe to make it from scratch once again piqued my interest. Most chicken pot pies I have had in my life had admittedly been from the frozen section of the grocery store, but they honestly hold up pretty well. The one thing that was holding me back from making this recipe was the making of the pie crust, which is one of my least favorite things to do in the kitchen. You could just buy puff pastry or make biscuits, which may be a little easier, but I wanted the full traditional chicken pot pie experience. The only problem with that is that this pie is made in a rectangular baking dish.
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
Pie Filling Ingredients
I used a whole chicken for this recipe, broken down and salted the night before
All Butter Pie Dough Ingredients
Make sure you use a good quality butter
No ingredients were left out of this recipe, but I want to highlight a few.
If you’re making your own pasty or pie dough for this recipe, use a good quality butter. You will be able to taste it in this recipe, so make sure you use something you like.
I decided to use a whole chicken and break it down, but you can use a rotisserie or smaller pieces of chicken to save a little time.
I wasn’t able to find cremini, button, or Chanterelle mushrooms at my grocery store, so I looked up good substitutes and landed on portobellos.
Tools:
Rolling pin
Big pot or dutch oven
Sharp Knife
Cooking Review:
Breaking Down and Preparing Chicken: 20 minutes
To prepare the chicken, I cut it down into 8 pieces (breasts cut into 4 pieces, 2 thighs, 2 legs). The wings were reserved to make chicken stock. Once broken down, I seasoned the chicken with salt and refrigerated it overnight.
Pie dough: 50 minutes
To make the pie dough, I mixed the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer and put them into the refrigerator, as there wasn’t enough room in my freezer. I had cut up my butter before this and put it into the freezer while the dry ingredients chilled. The water was also put into the freezer during this time. Once everything had chilled for 22 minutes, I put my stand mixer on the lowest speed while I added a few cubes of butter at a time to incorporate into the dry ingredients. It took about 7 minutes of mixing and adding until the butter began to look like walnut pieces to me. I then added all the water slowly, continuing to mix, followed by the vinegar until the dough began to come together. That step took about 9 minutes. I then turned everything out onto some plastic wrap and wrapped it up to be chilled overnight. The dough will be very crumbly at this point.
Preparation: 21 minutes
During the prep for this recipe, I chopped and peeled my carrots and chopped my celery and mushrooms.
Browning Chicken: 16 minutes
To brown the chicken, I heated a pan on high heat then added enough olive oil to coat the pan. Half of the chicken was added skin side down and cooked for 4 minutes per side before being removed to a plate. The second batch stuck to the pan a lot less, so I would say really make sure your pan is very hot before adding the oil and chicken.
You might want to get more sides than just the two I did
Cooking Vegetables: 22 minutes
Before adding the vegetables, the fat from cooking the chicken was removed from the pan and replaced with some butter. The vegetables were cooked in the butter for 22 minutes. After about 12 minutes. I increased the heat to get some more color and cook off the water more quickly. The chicken was returned to the pot at this point.
Making the Filling: 1 hour 8 minutes
Once the vegetables were cooked through, I deglazed the pan with white cooking wine and added the chicken broth and cream along with the thyme and bay leaves. The mixture was then brought to a boil before dropping to a simmer with a lid. After 10 minutes, the breast pieces were removed to a plate to avoid overcooking. I decided to go ahead and chop the parsley while the sauce simmered for another 20 minutes. I also started shredding the chicken breast once it was cool enough while the rest of the chicken finished cooking. After those 20 minutes, the pot was taken off the heat and the chicken was removed along with the thyme and bay leaves. After the chicken was cool enough, I shredded it all up to my liking. The fat was skimmed off the top of the sauce and mixed with some flour to make a thick paste. A ladleful of the sauce was mixed into the thick paste before being added back into the rest of the sauce and being brought back to a boil. Once at a boil, the sauce was reduced to a simmer for 5 minutes. The chicken, parsley, and peas were then added and mixed through. The filling was removed from the heat and was done at that point.
Preparing for baking: 14 minutes
A few minutes before I was ready to roll out the dough, I removed it from the refrigerator. I rolled mine out as thinly as I could on the plastic wrap, dusting it with a little flour to reduce the sticking. I cut some slits in it before transferring the pie filling into the baking dish. I turned the pie dough over onto the filling and quickly folded over the edges of the dough on itself where I could, as the butter will begin to melt. I brushed the top with egg wash and put it into the oven.
Baking: 47 minutes
I baked mine for a little longer than what the recipe called for because I wanted more color on top. Just be sure to monitor yours so that it doesn’t burn. Also, I put my dish on a baking sheet to catch the dripping that occurred during the bake. No need to let this cool before eating, but it will be too hot to eat straight out of the oven.
Analysis:
This chicken pot pie tastes exactly like chicken pot pie. It is better than those from the freezer section, having a better balance of flavors and a little more depth. However, it didn’t wow me from a filling standpoint. It was good, but not anything too special. There was a good ratio of chicken to vegetables and it was pretty well seasoned. As for the pie crust, it was very good, staying crispy along side and under the filling once in a bowl. The flavor is very good as well with the butter’s flavors standing out. With the time and effort taken into account, this recipe is a little underwhelming. I’m not so sure that I would want to go through the 4 plus hours of cooking again for something that didn’t really wow me. Honestly, the pie crust was my favorite part, so I think that using that along side a simpler recipe or filling may be a better use of time. This recipe gets a 7/10. It’s really just a little too much effort and time for the end result.
