Making Mini Chicken Pot Pies

It's been forever ago that I promised my husband I would make him his favourite chicken pot pies. Due to a million things that happened in my life all these years, including laziness, finally today I made some mini chicken pot pies for my husband and myself.

The pie's filling recipe that I used today was based around this source and I made the crust recipe by using Martha Stewart's pie crust recipe. She used food processor for making the crust dough but I don't have one. Hence, I just used my fingers to combine everything but it eventually came out pretty okay.. though the final result of the pie crust is more like the crumbly egg tart or fruit pie's crust.

My husband said my chicken pot pies were delicious but perhaps needed more pepper for the filling.

My very first mini chicken pot pie.

Here's more details of the recipe I used for making my mini chicken pot pies today.

Mini Chicken Pot Pies

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 1 1/4 cups All-purpose flour
• 1 tbs Sugar
• A dash of salt
• 1/2 cup Cold unsalted butter, cut in small cubes
• 3-5 tbs Cold Water
• For the filling:
• 100gr -150gr Chicken breast, as desired and cut into small cubes
• 1 Sweet onion, thinly diced
• 3 Cloves garlic, thinly chopped
• 1 Carrot, skinned and thinly diced
• 1 Potato, skinned and thinly diced
• 5-6 Canned Button Mushrooms, cut into small dices
• 2 tbs Unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup Flour
• 1 1/2 cups Liquid milk
• 1 cup Chicken stock (I made mine by mixing 1 cup water with 1 chicken bouillon cube)
• Salt, sugar and pepper, to taste
• 1 Egg, beaten to brush the pie crust
• Muffin pan(s)

Tutorials:

To make the pie crust: Sift flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Combine the flour mixture with butter by hand or by using food processor. Add some cold water to the mixture until the dough is crumbly but holds together.

Form dough into a disk and wrap tightly in a plastic. Refrigerate first.

To make the filling: In a pan, melt the butter and sauté the onion and garlic until fragrant. Stir in the chicken breast, carrot, potato cubes and mushroom for few minutes. Stir in the flour until well combined. Slowly pour the milk, chicken stock, a dash of salt, sugar and pepper into the mixture. Continue stirring until everything looks thick and smooth. Once the mixture is thickened, it's done - set aside.

Preheat the oven to 170 degree Celcius.

On a floured work surface, roll out the crust dough and make several round shape dough with measurement that would roughly fit your muffin cups. I used a mug to uniform the round shape dough for my pie.

Once done, carefully place and press the round dough in each muffin cups. Fill each cup with a large scoop of the filing. Top each pie with the round dough and crimp them together.

Brush the pie tops with some egg wash and make some holes on the pies' tops with forks for the steam.

Bake the pies in the oven for 30-45 minutes or until they come out golden brown.

Pies, anyone?

There are indeed quite a bit of steps involved in making these mini chicken pot pies but they are relatively easy to make. I would, however, use the ready-made pastry sheets for the crust if I were to make chicken pot pies again in the near future. I personally like the taste and texture of pastry for savoury pies better plus they are not that messy/crumbly when cut or eaten.

Yummy filling!

Enjoy this comfort food classic!