 Hi, I'm Stephanie Jaworski of Joybaking.com. Today we're going to make chicken pot pies and this is what they look like. What you have is a buttery crisp pastry on top with a little parmesan cheese and underneath you have chunks of roast chicken and all kinds of vegetables in a really nice cream sauce. So the first thing we need to do is to make our pastry. So I'm going to do it in a food processor. You don't have to, you could just do it by hand, but this is a really fast way to do it. So you will need one and two thirds cups, which is 220 grams of all-purpose flour. You may know that as plain flour. Put that and then you will need to add to that. Whoops, one tablespoon, 15 grams of granulated white sugar and a half a teaspoon, two grams of salt. Now if you're doing this by hand, just whisk all these ingredients together. I'm just going to pulse this for a second. Mix it together. And then we need some butter. You will need 10 tablespoons, which is 140 grams of butter. You want it cold, nice and cold. And then I like to cut it into these small pieces. So it's easier to cut the butter into the flour. I'll put that over the top. Now if you're doing this by hand, you just cut the butter into the flour. You could use a pastry blender. You could use two knives. You could really just use your fingertips. And what we're going to do is work it in until you have like coarse crumbs. And don't worry if there's a few big pieces of butter at the end. That's okay. Whoops, dropped a piece. Okay, you see that was only like maybe 10 seconds, 15, something like that. So this is what you're looking for. You can see there's there is little chunks of butter in there. And like I said, a few larger ones is absolutely fine. So now we're going to add some ice water. And I just put in the measuring cup. I just put some ice and then put some water over there. Get nice and cold. And now flour, depending on how it's stored, will absorb different amounts of water. So I'm going to say four to five tablespoons. But I'm not going to add that all at once. I'm going to add about three. And then I'm going to mix that. Now if you're going to doing this by hand, just toss it with a fork. And what you're looking for, you're not looking for a solid ball of pastry. You're just looking, it's still be kind of rough. And then when you kind of take some between your fingers, it'll hold together. I'm just going to pulse this. Okay, scrape down. Just stick in the corners. So that was three tablespoons. Now I definitely need a little more. And just tell by looking at it. I'm going to add another tablespoon. Okay. Okay, so now you can see, that's what you're looking for. But in the bowl, it's still kind of loose. So what I'm going to do now is just put it on a piece of plastic wrap, form it into a round. And then we're going to put it into the refrigerator to chill. So I'm just kind of, I just do it right on the plastic wrap so that way I'll mess up my counter. And just form it into a nice round like so. And then wrap it up and put it into the refrigerator. And then when we come back, we're going to start our chicken filling. So now for our chicken filling, you will need a large skillet and put that, start to heat up my pan, medium high heat. And what I'm going to do is add one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of oil, 15 grams each. So I'll just, is that going? If you didn't want to add butter, you don't have to. I think it adds to the flavor when we're sauteing our vegetables, but you could just use all oil if you would prefer that. And then what you will need, once we add that bubbling, is you will need one cup, 140 grams of finely chopped onions. That's pretty good. And you will need one cup, 140 grams of carrots, coarse peeled and chopped into small bite-sized pieces. A half a cup, 65 grams of, you know, fairly finely chopped celery. And one cup, 90 grams of mushrooms, any type you want to use and chop those into bite-sized pieces. Of course, you could vary your vegetables. You don't like mushrooms, you can just leave that out. And of course, I just like to add, when I'm sauteing vegetables, I like to add a little salt. How much salt, I know people want to know how much salt, but you know, everybody likes a different amount. I would say maybe a half a teaspoon, quarter of a teaspoon. So what I'm going to do is just saute this over medium-high heat until the onions get soft and the carrots and the celery are like tender crisp. You don't want them mushy. You still want them to have a shape, but not just tender crisp. Okay, so that's pretty good. I always like taste one of my carrots. But sometimes it's kind of hard to, I'm childish by looking at them if they're soft enough. And so I have a little tiny bit of bite to it, which is what I like. So now, what I'm going to do, and you don't have to do this, but I like it, I'm going to add a third of a cup of white wine. It's about 80 ml. And I like the flavor of it. So what I'm going to do is I just have my heat on high. I'm just going to let that evaporate because I just want the flavor of the white wine. And you know the rule when you're using alcohol, if you wouldn't drink it, don't use it in your cooking. So the alcohol has almost evaporated. So now what I'm going to do is add three tablespoons, 25 grams of all-purpose flour because we're going to make a sauce. And the flour will thicken our sauce. So what I'm going to do is just over the top and then just, now you want to cook that flour just a bit. So just stir it and get all the vegetables all covered in that flour. Smells good in here. And then what you will need to have is two and a half cups, which is 600 ml of chicken broth or stock. You can use homemade, you can use, I'm just using a store-bought and then add that. Let's put that in slowly. And that flour is going to, as we cook this, it is going to thicken everything. And then I'm going to also add some ground spices. Now I like to add a half a teaspoon of a one gram of ground thyme. I think it just, I don't know, I think it enhances the chicken flavor. Again, it depends on what you want. And my secret ingredient is I'm going to add a half a teaspoon of one gram of dried tarragon leaves. Now some people, I just think tarragon and chicken is just like perfect pairing. And now some people say it kind of tastes like licorice, I don't know, whether I would say that, but what I do know is it's really, really good in hearing. Now some people do not like that. You can just leave it out if you want. Or you can. And you got to be careful with tarragon too. I mean, I would start with only about a half a teaspoon of the dried because, you know, if you add too much, it can kind of just overpower your dish. So now, I'm sorry, bring that up to a boil. But of course, chicken, chicken pot pie is kind of a cream based filling. I don't like to get too carried away with the cream. I tend to use more chicken broth, but I am going to add a half a cup, 120 milliliters of cream. And you may ask what type of cream if you want a really rich filling, you could use the heavy cream or you can use a light cream. I've even used a half and half. I mean, really, how rich do you want it? And then, I'm going to add some ground pepper. And this is where I would taste your sauce and you can adjust the seasoning. I like lots of pepper. And people actually like to add a little heat, some crushed red pepper flakes. That's what you could do as well. So I'm going to taste this. Definitely more salt. You know, if things, when you're cooking, salt really brings out the flavors. So if you are making something and you taste it, always taste when you're cooking. And taste a little bland. Sometimes that is because you don't, and you don't, I mean, even long as you don't taste the salt. But if you taste a little bland, add a little salt because I find the salt really helps bring out all those flavors. That's good. Okay, so now I'm just going to cook this. And then bring this up because I'm going to also add one cup of 130 grams of, I'm using frozen peas, those little tiny ones, you know, I think they're great. You could add, if you don't want peas, you could add some corn. Add that in. To cook that. And then of course, the star of the show is the chicken. So you will need three cups, 340 grams of chicken. You can use either a roasted or just a blanched chicken. You can use, if you have, like if you made a roast chicken at home and you have leftovers, you could use that. I cheat, I figure I'm doing all this work, I'll cheat on the chicken, and I just go buy one of those rotisserie chickens at the grocery store. You know, find a good one and I'm sad. So I just cut them in bite-sized pieces like this. Now you could, of course, if, especially Thanksgiving or something, you have a turkey, make a lot of leftovers, make, just make turkey pot pies same way. So I'm just going to put that in there. And I'm just going to let this simmer for a little bit to thicken up. Okay, so I let it boil away, gently boil away here to cook those frozen peas and also to thicken up my sauce. So now I'm going to add some chopped parsley, about a quarter of a cup, 15 grams. And plug that so it's not so noisy. And there we have it. Oh, doesn't that look gorgeous? You know, when I was a kid, my mom would make something like this and she'd actually spoon it over tea biscuits. So if you want to keep some, try that. It's really good. But we're making pot pies here today. So now if you want, you can make one large chicken pot pie. You can use a nine or a 10 inch, a pretty deep dish pie plate. That would be fine. But I, you know, because it's just rick and I now. So I like to make individual ones that way I'll have leftovers. I freeze them and then on those days I don't feel like cooking. I don't have to. I'll just pull them out. And so you can use different things. I used to use these five inch, about 15 centimeter metal pie plate, little individual pie plates. But you know, I was at the grocery store recently and I found these six. These little, I think about five inch, 12 and a half or four inch, five, something like that. Little aluminum foil ones. They're great. So what I'm going to do is just evenly divide my filling. And then what I'm going to do, because that's really hot. And I don't want to roll up my pastry and put hot, like cold pastry on a hot filling. So what I'm going to do is just evenly divide it between the five pie plates. And then I'm going to let it cool down. And when we come back, we will finish them off. So now what we're going to do is put the two things together, the pastry with the filling. So what I've done, as you can already see, I've done some of them. But what you want to do is divide your pastry into five equal pieces, which is you want to, if you have a scale, it's about 80 grams for each piece of round of pastry. And then on a lightly floured surface, what we're going to do is roll it out. Now what I like to do is to have an extra one. And then I can see on hand so I can see how big I have to roll my pastry. I was going to see you just keep moving it and kind of move your pastry around so it's not sticking. If you find it's cracking, it's probably because your pastry is too cold, conversely, if it's really sticking, it's probably too warm. So just pop it back into the fridge for a few minutes. So what I like to do is just take whatever type you're using and just put it over. You want a little extra overlap. So I'm just going to... It's not a perfect round, but it'll do. So now you want that... Mine's cooled off pretty good. So what I'm going to do is just take that, put it over, and then just tuck it and just press it in. You want to make sure... Press all the way around because you don't want that pastry lifting up as it bakes. Just pinch, pinch, pinch all the way around. And then what I like to do is take a fork. You might have to put it in the flour and then I just... It's a little decorative. And then to make sure it's pressed down just times of fork, I think kind of... It gives it that more polished look. More... Okay, looks good. And then just take a sharp knife. You want to make... I make three slits so that the steam can escape as the... As our pie is baked. And then what I have here is a large egg. I'm just going to... You can just use a whisk or just a fork if you want. And then I like to add about a tablespoon of cream. And we're going to brush this on the pastry because that will help with browning. Okay, looks good. Then with a pastry brush. Just take and just brush. Try not to get it too thick. You don't want it to pool. Which would just want it to... Like so. And then what I do... Just add a little more flavor. I've graded some Parmesan cheese. I choose my box grater. You'd do use a hand grater. And then I just kind of put a little over the top. Adds flavor. A little bit of interest. Like so. And... I'll do one more because... I'm going to bake two. Now you don't have to bake these right away. You could put them in the fridge. Cover them, put them in the fridge, you know, for a day. Or if you're making the morning till the evening. Or I always freeze these. You know, when I say I have some roast chicken left over. I make these and then I just freeze them. And then, so what you do is once you've done like this, then just put them in the freezer. And then just put them in the freezer. And then just like this, until they're frozen. And then take them out. Wrap them up really good. And then put them back into the freezer. You can freeze them for a month or two. And then when you want that really quick, you know, feel like making anything. You could take them out the day, like the night before and let them defrost in the refrigerator. Or sometimes I don't even do that. I take them like maybe a couple hours before I'm going to cook them. And then I bake them off. So what we're going to do is you need to have your oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 190 degrees Celsius. And then I'm going to bake two of them. And I find, you know, 30 to 35 minutes, depending on your oven. Really, what you're looking for is the pastry to be nice and brown. And then what you will notice where the slits are, you will see the juices bubbling up. And that's when you know they're done. Okay, our chicken pot pies are done. I don't think they look gorgeous. Nice, beautiful, golden brown. And the juices were starting to bubble. There's a couple things I didn't mention. One is, as you can see, when I bake my chicken pot pies, I do put them on a baking sheet just in case you have any spill over and it's easier to get them in and out. And the other thing is, when you put the pastry on top of your chicken filling, if your filling was a little warm, and that pastry gets too soft, pop them into the fridge and get them nice and cold before you bake them off. So at this point, put your baking sheet on a wire rack and then you don't want to serve them immediately because it's really hot. So I let them sit about 15 minutes. So that's what I'm gonna do. And when we come back, we will try one. Okay, so let's try our chicken pot pie. So you can see, I don't know whether you see that. You get the filling nice underneath. Pastry, love the pastry. Very nice. You have that buttery crisp pastry on top and then the filling. I mean, chicken vegetables, cream sauce, what more? Do I have to say? It's really great. And you know what, serve it with a toss salad and you have such a great meal. So try it and until next time, I'm Stephanie Jaworsk, gave joy baking.com. __________.