The Epic Comfort of Chicken Pot Pie, Any Night of the Week.
As hearty as the most labor-intensive of Sunday suppers, this super fast skillet chicken pot pie recipe is all bang, no buck. Because this skillet pot pie recipe relies on whole milk instead of cream, and is loaded with lean chicken breast and vegetables like carrots, celery and peas, it definitely counts as a balanced meal. Sure, there’s some butter in there—OK, a fair amount of butter—so it’s not as light as a rice bowl or dinner salad, but it’s a filling supper you can feel good about feeding your family. Especially on a dark and stormy night, when all you want is to fill those bellies with warmth and comfort.
A Classic Chicken Pot Pie Filling That’s Ready Fast.
We’re not trying to break the mold with this easy chicken pot pie recipe. Quite the opposite. We wanted to craft a homey, classic, comforting pot pie that you can make in no time flat. With a store-bought pot pie crust—we just use store-bought frozen puff pastry—all you’ll need to do is make a filling. But, even the pot pie filling relies on some simple shortcuts to make your life just that much easier. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Chicken! Save yourself major time by using one of those already-cooked rotisserie chickens from the grocery store.
- Vegetables! Carrots, celery, frozen peas and onions.
- Seasoning! Celery seed and garlic powder—a perfectly retro combo and just right in this skillet pot pie. Salt and pepper, of course. If you’d like to add it, a sprinkling of fresh thyme is nice, too.
- Liquid! Broth and milk are thickened with a little flour to make a creamy chicken pot pie sauce.
How To Make Chicken Pot Pie
This skillet chicken pot pie is easy as...well...pie. It’s a one pot meal that utilizes some pro quick dinner tips and results in a beautiful and homey dish that the whole family can be really excited about. We like to the assembly as a four-step process:
- Make a super-flavorful roux! Onion is cooked in butter until it's really fragrant, and then you make sort of a seasoned paste by adding flour, salt, pepper, celery seed, garlic powder and thyme. Voila! You made a roux! Roux just means a fat-flour mixture that serves as the base for making a creamy sauce.
- Make a sauce! Milk and then stock are added slowly to the roux. As you add the milk and stock, the roux will become a creamy sauce. Stir the chicken and vegetables into the sauce to finish the filling—you can add the peas frozen! No need to pre-cook them.
- Crust time! Grab your puff pastry—slightly defrosted so that you can work with it—and you can create a lattice top if you're feeling fancy, or just place one large pastry sheet on top of the skillet full of pot pie filling. If you choose to use just one sheet of pastry for the top, be sure to cut a few slits into it for the steam to escape while baking. Here, we even cut the pastry into squares and overlapped them.
- Bake! No explanation necessary, right?
Tools You’ll Need:
- A sharp knife.
- Cutting board.
- A whisk.
- A cast iron or other oven-proof skillet.
Other Easy Weeknight, One-Pan Chicken Recipes:
One-pan, easy chicken dinners are kind of our thing (if you hadn’t noticed.) Here are a few of our very favorites:
Homemade Chicken Pot Pie—Easier Than You Thought?
There are certain dishes that have gained a reputation as fussy or a lot of work, and pot pie is one of them. We’re hoping this easy recipe changes that a little bit, and makes homemade chicken pot pie something that feels within your reach now! Let us know how yours turned out! Snap a photo of your skillet chicken pot pie, and maybe even a video of the beautiful people you feed it to. Tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper. Happy eating!
