Chicken or Turkey Pot Pie

After Thanksgiving there’s always a bunch of turkey leftovers and finding delicious ways to use them up can be challenging. Believe me when I say you must make this homemade pot pie. You can use turkey or chicken, it’s divine either way. The flavor of this pot pie is the best I’ve had!

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Homemade pot pie

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This recipe comes from The Best Chicken Recipes which is a fabulous hard bound book FULL of wonderful recipes. I originally checked it out from the library, but have since ordered my own copy.

This pot pie recipe has earned a permanent place in my recipe library. The fact that it makes 2 pies is great, you can freeze one to bake another night.

I’ve made several recipes from this book, it’s definitely keeper, and it’s full of helpful diagram and tips. Plenty of advice on different kitchen tools and gadgets as well.

One of the things mentioned in the book is that you can certainly make your own pie crust, and they do offer a savory pie dough recipe for you to use, but they also offer advice on store bought doughs. Since you will need crust to go on top of each pie, you don’t want to buy those preformed pie crusts, you want the rolled out doughs, like Pillsbury. This isn’t a product endorsement, I just happen to really like their dough and it’s easy to work with.

The only issue with using the store bought dough is that you cannot place round precut dough into a 13×9 pan, you must make two 9″ pies. One 9″ pie was plenty for our family, hence why I froze the other. If you prefer to make one 13×9, you will probably want to make your own crust.

Ingredients you will need:

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 celery ribs, sliced 1/4″ thick
• 2 medium onions, minced
• salt
• 3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup dry vermouth (can substitute with chicken broth)
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 tsp minced fresh thyme leaves or 1/2 tsp dried
• 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed OR 8 cups cooked, cubed chicken or turkey
• 1 16-oz bag frozen peas and carrots
• 4 or 5 small red potatoes, peeled, cubed and boiled
• ground black pepper
• 1 double savory pie dough

Kitchen tools you’ll find helpful:

• Dutch oven
• Cutting board
• 9″ Pie plates
• Baking sheet

One more note: This recipe uses vermouth. I buy a bottle of dry Vermouth for $5.00 at the local wine shop here in town. It lasts me a long time and works great for cooking, you can use it as a substitute in any recipe calling for dry white wine. In fact, I bought it originally because Julia Child suggested it in her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Hint: If you prefer your pot pie to be a bit more soupy, serve it right after you take it out of the oven. if you like it a little thicker, let it set up for 15-20 minutes before cutting into it.

Either way it’s absolutely mouth watering. I promise you’ll add it to your regular rotation!

Maybe you have leftover ground beef or lamb to use? Check out my Shepherd’s Pie recipe, which is great for tossing leftovers together to make one delicious dinner.

This post was originally published on December 26. 2009