BA’s Best: Fast Chicken Pot Pie

This is a pretty sweet weeknight dinner situation. Surely the rotisserie chicken you’ve brought home could only ever dream of being the star of such a magnificent, show-stopping dish. Plus you get to use frozen pearl onions so you don’t even have to stand around cursing your very existence while you peel those suckers. So easy! You could practically make this dead (except everyone knows ghosts can’t taste their food, so the task would be rather fruitless). Just remember to thaw your puff pastry and pearl onions in the fridge for a day prior to using and you’ll be all set.

Also, a word to the wise: please let this cool a good while before digging in. The pearl onions are otherwise bursts of lava that sear the tastebuds off your tongue, crippling you for the remainder of the meal.

BA’s Best: Fast Chicken Pot Pie

Taken from BA’s Best arsenal, with the most minor of tweaks here and there

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter
1 large shallot, diced
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
1/3 cup all-purpose flour, measured correctly + more for dusting
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup whole milk
6 small carrots, peeled and diced
3 stalks celery, diced
4 cups coarsely chopped or shredded rotisserie chicken meat, skin removed (and hopefully immediately devoured!)
1 ½ cups frozen pearl onions, thawed
1 ½ cups frozen peas, thawed
¼ cup chopped flat leaf (Italian) parsley
Worcestershire sauce, to taste
Hot sauce, to taste (optional)
1 large sheet of frozen puff pastry (~14 oz package), thawed (preferably all-butter)
1 large egg, beaten to blend

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Heat the butter in a large skillet over medium heat until foaming. Add the shallot and thyme then sauté for ~4 minutes, until the shallot is translucent and golden. Add 1/3 cup flour and cook, whisking constantly, until a pale golden-brown paste has formed and become fragrantly toasty. Whisk in the chicken stock by the ½ cup, whisking until smooth after each addition. Whisk in the milk, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook the mixture until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, ~10-15 minutes. Add the carrots and celery and cook for another 5 minutes, until the carrots are just tender. Stir in the chicken meat, pearl onions, peas, and parsley. Take a big spoonful and really taste the stew. Season with as much or as little Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, and/or pepper as you’d like. I highly recommend at least a good dose of Worcestershire sauce (or Maggi sauce if you know about Maggi sauce and its wonderous powers).

Scrape the stew into a shallow 2-qt baking dish. Unfold the puff pastry onto a lightly floured work surface and smooth out any creases (or, if you were unable to get pre-rolled pastry – get liberal with the flour and start rolling out that block of dough). Roll the dough out further as needed to be able to drape over the baking dish. Carefully transfer the pastry to the dish and do exactly that: drape it over the filling. You can either trim things to create overhang (if you used a shallower dish) or do a bit of a crimped, thicker edge folded into the dish (if you used a deeper dish – like me!). Whatever option you chose, ensure that no areas of pastry have liquid pooling on top of them (this part will never puff up and crisp properly). Brush the pastry with the beaten egg and cut a few venting slits in the dough.

Set the baking dish inside a rimmed baking sheet (to catch those drips!) and bake until the puff pastry is golden-brown and the filling is bubbling away madly, ~20-25 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F and bake for another 30-35 minutes, until the pastry has deepened significantly in colour and is cooked through. You should not have burning pastry – if this is happening, turn the oven down a bit. Let the pot pie rest for 30 minutes (yes, 30!) before dishing up. Aren’t you glad you waited so you could eat this beauty with intact taste buds?