Chicken pot pie is undoubtedly an investment: in deep, delicious flavors but also time and effort. Our recipe for Chicken Pot Pie with Spring Vegetables delivers on flavor, while relying on time-saving techniques and key store-bought ingredients to make it a little bit easier.
Cooking Tips
For the Crispiest Pot-Pie Crust, Turn Your Dutch Oven into a Baking Sheet
This versatile kitchen tool just added a new use to its repertoire.
By Published Apr. 8, 2024.
By using store-bought puff pastry, we forgo the need to pull out a food processor and labor over making a pie dough; employing boneless chicken thighs that stay moist throughout cooking (instead of poaching chicken in one pot and building a gravy in another), saves even more kitchen clean-up and plenty of time.
But perhaps the most astounding part of this recipe is the clever way that we use a Dutch oven as a baking sheet while the pie bakes.
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When baking the pie crust directly on top of the filling, we invariably ended up with soggy results. Placing the crust on a separate baking sheet could help, but we wanted to minimize extra clean-up.
The solution? Using the lid of the Dutch oven as a stand-in baking sheet—simply turn the lid of the Dutch oven upside down before covering the pot and bake the pastry on top. Elevating the crust away from the creamy filling allows it to become extra-browned and crispy, perfect for simply laying on top of the fully baked end product.
To see how it works, watch the video below.
While it can be difficult to resist digging into the pot pie as soon as soon as you’re finished cooking it, this recipe makes for a wonderful present for new parents, people recovering from illness, or a simple “thinking of you” gift.