Faux Chicken Pot Pies

Mmmmm... Look at that. That is a faux chicken pot pie. What makes it faux? It's not in an actual pie crust, which you can probably see from the picture.

Drew loves chicken pot pies, and I had been wanting to try my hand at making them. With him on the low carb diet, though, he obviously cannot have a pie crust. So, this is what I made:

Make the pastry ahead of time. I did it a few hours ahead, but you could do it the day before if you wanted to. Drew thinks these look like popovers, but I've never had popovers before, so I don't really know. Basically, it's a really tall pastry with a hollow inside.

Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees.

Then in a medium sized pot, melt 1 stick butter.

 

Add 1 C water. It should get all bubbly and look like a science experiment.

Now, add 1 C flour.

And mix the heck out of it!!!

It should look like this when you're done mixing the heck out of it. I just use a spatula, FYI.

Now, take your mixture off the burner and let it cool a tad. Then, add 4 eggs one at a time, mixing well between each.

Spoon your mixture into a Pammed muffin tin. It just takes 12 cups.

 

Bake for 40 minutes. When they are done, they will look like this:

Stab each one with a fork a couple times so that the steam can escape.

Prepare your chicken next. The original recipe calls for it to be poached, but I wasn't really wild about that the first time I made it. This time I used grilled. Honestly, you could just get an already cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store if you wanted to. Any chicken that isn't really heavily spiced would do well in this dish. Except maybe friend chicken. I don't think fried chicken would be very good. You'll need 2-3 lbs of chicken, though. If you need any ideas on how to spice a grilled chicken, the seasonings used on the grilled chicken in this dish are great.

Now, I'm going to assume you have your chicken all whipped up. Let's make the filling.

Start by chopping your veggies. I chopped some carrots. You could add celery or even squash if you wish. I had carrots and green beans on hand, though, so that's what I used. I ended up chopping 4-5 carrots.

Melt 1 T of butter.

Throw in some chopped onions. You could chop some fresh ones if you want to. I like to keep a bag of Ore Ida frozen chopped onions on hand. I hate messing with onions, and the frozen ones work great.

Watch for them to become translucent and add in your carrots or other vegetables.

Throw in 4 T flour.

When the flour becomes golden, add a spice of your choice. The original recipe called for sage; I think thyme is better, though. You'll want around 3 T of whatever spice you use.

Mix in really well, then add 3 C of chicken stock. FYI, 1 box of chicken stock is approximately 3 C. It's a tiny bit more, I think, but it's close enough you can just use the whole box if you want to.

Now add 1 C heavy cream.

After that you can thrown in any additional veggies you want to. I added a cup or so of frozen green beans.

My photographer (Drew) decided to get a picture of all the main pieces of this meal:

Now, add your chicken to the filling. I just kind of grabbed handfulls of chicken and dropped it in there. If you aren't careful, the filling will slosh out and hit your photographer, and then he will accuse you of being a thrower of chicken even though you are clearly just a dropper of chicken.

Add salt and pepper to your liking and prepare to serve.

If you are on the low carb diet, you can skip the step in which you break open to pastries into your bowl. If you are not on the low carb diet, it would be a sad step to accidentally miss. These pastries rock. (If you have any left over, eat them for breakfast with some strawberry preserves. It is AWESOME.)

Ladle in your filling.

And stare, mesmerized by the awesomeness that is Faux Chicken Pot Pies.

Recipes:

Pastry:

1 stick butter

1 C water

1 C flour

4 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 400°. 

2. Combine the water and butter in a pan and bring it to a boil. 

3. When it boils, add the flour and reduce the heat. Stir until it’s all one big ball. (Should happen fairly quickly.) 

4. Remove from heat. Begin adding the eggs one at a time. Don’t add the next egg until the one before it is fully incorporated. 

5. Bake 40 minutes.

6. Poke holes in pastries in order to let steam escape.

Filling:

2-3 lbs prepared chicken

1 T butter

2-ish C of thinly sliced carrots
1 cup chopped onion
4 T flour
2-ish C frozen green beans
3 T thyme

3 C chicken stock
1 C heavy cream

1. Saute your onion and carrots in melted butter.

2. When onions are translucent, add flour and mix well.

3. When flour appears golden, add thyme. Mix.

4. Add chicken stock and heavy cream.

5. Add frozen green beans and prepared chicken.

6. Wait for filling to thicken just a little, then serve.

Break pastries open in bowl and fill with desired amount of filling.