When my mother moved to the United States 40 years ago, she was distressed by the cold weather and the food. The winter was about 60 degrees colder than she was used to, and the food about 95% more bland. That all changed the first time she ate at KFC: the fried chicken was tender, juicy, and (most importantly) spicy. When I was growing up, we ate at KFC with surprising frequency. I always viewed their advertisements for chicken pot pie with some mistrust. It just didn't look very good, and my disgust with soggy bread added to my apprehension. Although their execution seemed imperfect, the idea of chicken pot pie always appealed to me. 15 years later, I decided to try making it at home, and it was way tastier than I expected it to be. The pie crust was incredibly flaky, and the sauce tasted just like Thanksgiving gravy. The best part is that it's an all-inclusive, one-pot meal full of vegetables. It's the perfect dinner for a cold winter night.
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 ounces)
3/4 teaspoon salt
14 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons sour cream
4 tablespoons ice water
3.5-4 pounds bone-in chicken thighs
1 cup frozen pearl onions
1 onion
3 carrots
3 ribs celery
4 cups low-sodium, fat free chicken broth (32 ounces)
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup frozen peas
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/3 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
Add 1.66 cups flour (8.25 ounces) and salt to a food processor and pulse for a few seconds until combined. A food processor is the fastest and easiest way to make pie dough, but you can definitely do it by hand also and it's just as delicious. If you're making the dough by hand, add the flour and salt to a large bowl and whisk well.
The secret to great pie dough is really cold butter. Leave the butter in the fridge until you're absolutely ready for it. Dice 10 tablespoons of buter into 1/2-inch cubes and sprinkle over the flour mixture. For a food processor, pulse the butter into the flour until it's in pea-sized lumps, about 8 pulses. By hand, rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it's also in pea-sized lumps.
Add the sour cream (cold) and ice water (extra cold). Run the food processor until...
...the dough clumps all together. By hand, fold in the wet ingredients with a spatula and rub together with your fingertips until a cohesive dough forms. If the dough is too floury and doesn't stick together, add more ice water one teaspoon at a time.
Turn the dough out onto plastic wrap, flatten into a small disc, and refrigerate for at least an hour. The dough should be speckled with butter. In the oven, those little spots of butter will melt and leave tiny air pockets resulting in fantastically flaky pastry.
Heat a little oil in a skillet on medium-high heat. When the oil just starts to smoke, add the chicken thighs with the skin-side down. The chicken will spatter everywhere, so use one of these handy mesh screens if you have one and wear an apron because chicken fat doesn't come out (trust me).
Cook for about 5 minutes per side, or enough to create a lovely brown color.
Remove the chicken to a plate to cool. These probably could have browned for another minute or two to get them a nice deep brown.
Drain the oil/chicken fat mixture except for a tablespoon. Heat the skillet again over medium-high heat. Add the pearl onions and let cook, stirring every now and then, until light brown on all sides. I'm not a big fan of pearl onions, so I just put mine on my boyfriend's plate.
While the onions are cooking, roughly chop the onion, carrots, and celery. If you leave the little root end on the onion while you're cutting it, it holds the whole onion together.
Once the pearl onions are cooked, add the cut veggies. Cook for a few minutes until the onions just turn translucent. I'm using a 10-inch cast iron skillet here, but you can use up to a 12-inch skillet in any material.
Add the chicken on top of the veggies with skin-side up. Bake at 450 degrees on the lower-middle rack until the temperature of the thickest parts of the thighs is 175 degrees, about 17 minutes.
While the skillet is in the oven, roll out the chilled dough.
The final circle should be about an inch larger in diameter than your skillet. I usually roll pie dough on plastic wrap sprinkled with flour since it makes it easy to move. Slip the plastic wrap onto an overturned baking sheet and place in the freezer until the skillet is finished cooking.
Remove the skillet from the oven and check the chicken's temperature. Once it's done, transfer the chicken to a plate and let rest.
Here are the beautifully softened veggies. Add salt and pepper to taste.
To the vegetables, add the chicken broth and stir to combine. Cook over medium-high until the broth just starts to simmer.
Pour the contents of the skillet through a colander set over a large bowl.
To make the gravy, melt 4 tablespoons of butter in the empty skillet over medium-high heat until the butter foams.
Slowly add 1/2 cup of flour, whisking vigorously to combine all the flour before adding the next batch. Don't let the mixture sit without stirring or it'll burn.
After all of the flour has been added, let the roux cook for a minute or two until it darkens slightly. Keep whisking!
Slowly add the broth, whisking all the while, until all of the broth is added. The gravy should be nice and smooth before you add more broth. Add the cream, reduce heat to medium, and simmer for 10 minutes until the gravy is thickened. Whisk every minute or so to prevent the bottom from burning.
While the gravy is cooking, remove the chicken skins and discard (or eat them). Cut or pull the chicken off the bones.
Roughly chop the chicken into bite-sized chunks.
Once the sauce has finished cooking, add the chicken. At this point, I was like, "wow that looks like way too much sauce." But in the end, it turned out to be a perfect amount to balance out the rest of the filling.
Then add the cooked vegetables, peas, lemon juice, and thyme.
Gently stir everything to combine and add salt and pepper to taste. Remember that the chicken hasn't been salted, so you'll want a little extra salt in the sauce that will enter the chicken while it's in the oven.
Place the frozen pie dough on top and trim around the periphery of the skillet.
Cut a few steam vents in the top of the dough.
Place the skillet on a foil-lined baking sheet (because no one wants to clean that up). Bake on the upper-middle rack at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for another 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes for the filling to firm up a little. Cut into wedges or just scoop with a big spoon. Yes, we ate half a pie; yes, I know, that's 1/4 pie per person, and no, I have no defense.
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