Contents
Chicken and vegetables in a thick velouté under a pastry lid. The dish is old and English in origin, but the American version — a bottom crust as well as a top, peas and carrots, a sheet-pan-sized family portion — is the one most people picture.
It is the clearest case in this folder of a pie where the filling must be cold before it is covered.
What makes it work
- Cool the filling completely before it meets pastry. Warm filling melts the butter in the crust before it reaches the oven, and the lid bakes greasy and flat. Spread it on a tray to cool fast, or make it the day before.
- The sauce must be thicker than it looks right. It loosens in the oven as the vegetables give up water. A roux of 60 g butter and 60 g flour to 750 ml of stock is the working ratio.
- Poach the chicken in the stock you then use. Thighs, not breast — breast dries out on a second cooking. Twenty minutes at a bare simmer.
- Bottom crust needs blind baking; a top-crust-only pie does not.
- Cut real vents. A sealed pie steams the underside of its own lid.
- Bake hot: 200 °C. The filling is already cooked, so the oven is only there for the pastry.
Ingredients
One 23 cm deep pie, or a 20 × 30 cm dish. Serves 6.
- 1 batch all-butter pie crust, or 375 g puff pastry for a lid only
- 700 g chicken thighs, boneless
- 750 ml chicken stock
- 60 g unsalted butter
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 celery sticks, diced
- 250 g mushrooms, quartered, optional
- 60 g all-purpose flour
- 150 ml double cream
- 150 g frozen peas
- 2 tsp thyme leaves
- salt, black pepper, nutmeg
- 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk
Method
Poach the chicken in the stock at a bare simmer for 20 minutes. Lift it out, cool and shred. Keep the stock hot.
Melt the butter, cook the onion, carrot and celery for eight minutes until soft, then the mushrooms until their water has gone.
Stir in the flour and cook two minutes. Add the hot stock a ladle at a time, whisking, and simmer until thick — it should coat a spoon heavily. Stir in the cream, peas, thyme and shredded chicken. Season hard, including nutmeg.
Spread it on a tray and cool completely. This is the step that decides the pastry.
Heat the oven to 200 °C / 400 °F. If using a bottom crust, blind bake it.
Fill, lay the pastry over, seal, crimp, and cut four vents. Chill 20 minutes, then brush with egg wash.
Bake 35–40 minutes, until deep gold and bubbling at the vents.
Rest ten minutes before serving.
Notes
- A puff lid on a deep dish is the fastest good version — no bottom crust, no blind baking, 25 minutes at 200 °C.
- Freezes well unbaked, assembled, for three months. Bake from frozen at 190 °C for an hour.
- Turkey after Christmas, ham and leek, or mushroom alone all work in the same velouté.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Pie and tart recipes · pies and tarts · all-butter pie crust
Nearby: steak and ale pie · tourtiere · quiche lorraine