The ultimate American comfort food. Chicken Pot Pie is literally a pie made with chicken and typically with green beans, peas, carrots, and onions in a delicious white sauce. I never grew up having Chicken Pot Pie, and for some reason I think a lot of people haven’t or don’t eat it despite what a classic dish it is. My best guess is that this is because it can be time consuming to make the pie dough. I use store-bought pie dough mix and store-bought rotisserie chicken (a genius invention), which saves an incredible amount of time without scarifying any flavor. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 9 x 13 pie pan
• 1 package of store-bought pie crust mix to make two pie crusts (I use the Betty Crocker brand)
• 1 cup of green beans, diced
• 1 cup of carrots, thinly sliced
• 3/4 cup of frozen peas
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1 pre-cooked chicken breast, diced
• 5 tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp of cream cheese (or Mascarpone cheese)
• 1/3 cup of flour
• 1 and 1/4 cup of chicken broth
• 3/4 cup of whole milk
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg, beaten

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

1. Saute the diced onion in two tablespoons of butter in a medium pan over medium heat, stirring often. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Next, add the carrots, green beans and peas and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring often, until veggies are soft. Season the veggies with salt and pepper but don’t overdo it. Take them off the heat. Add the diced chicken and combine. Set aside. (Tip: If you find in between adding the veggies that they are starting to look as if they are burning, always add more butter to the pan).

2. Make the pie crusts. Follow the package directions to make the dough. Roll out half the dough to roll out one pie crust onto a floured surface using a floured roller pin. Make sure you roll the die crust out so that it is about an inch wider than your pie pan. Fold the pie crust into your pie pan. Roll out the second pie crust the same way, and set aside.

3.  Make the sauce – melt 3 tbsp of butter over medium heat. Whisk your flour into your butter, and heat for one minute whisking often. Turn the heat to low and add the chicken stock gradually and continue whisking until there is no more flour bits. Next, pour into the milk and the cream cheese, raise the temperature to medium low heat, and continue whisking until thickened, approximately 10 minutes but may be longer. Add black pepper. When the sauce coats a spoon thickly is when you know it is ready.

4. Add your veggies and chicken to the sauce. Pour into the bottom pie crust. Gently set the top pie crust over the filling. Use your hands to seal the edges of the pie crusts together and use a fork to primp the edges of the top pie crust. Cut small slits in the pie to allow the heat to escape from the pie while cooking. Brush the top crust with the beaten egg so that it gets a nice golden color when baking in the oven.

5. Bake the pie in the oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Lower the temperature to 375 degrees and continue baking for 15 more minutes. When finished baking, allow the pie to cool for 20 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!