★ Why You'll Love this Recipe ★
This puff pastry chicken pot pie is delicious and easy to make home but tastes even better than any of the frozen ones you can buy.
Puff Pastry + Chicken Pot Pies = The Perfect Match
Imagine a flaky, warm crust with a creamy, cozy inside. It might just be the ultimate comfort food. And it's really easy to pull off making this meal at home, on a tight budget and without spending a ton of time on it.
A great family-friendly meal when you're on a budget.
This recipe makes two giant pies for about $8/each if you can find your chicken on sale like I did.
★ Ingredients You'll Need ★
First you need to cook your chicken and create your broth. This isn't hard and requires some standard ingredients.
Chicken Ingredients
- Whole chicken. Nothing fancy. Fresh is better than frozen but frozen works too. You want one about 3lbs in size.
- Onion. White onion or yellow onions are best.
- Carrots. Slice fresh carrots are going to provide the best flavor. Frozen or baby carrots work in a pinch.
- Celery. This completes the trifecta of flavor. The onion-carrot-celery blend is a classic cooking base of flavor for soups and sauce. In this case broth.
- Salt and water. If using sea salt, use about half the amount the recipe below calls for.
Next, the pie.
Pot Pie Ingredients
Here's everything you need to turn your cooked chicken and homemade broth into a delicious, savory pie.
- Butter, flour, milk, chicken bullion and your chicken broth. These ingredients combine to form a thick and flavorful, creamy sauce.
- Vegetables. Mixed peas and carrots are classic. You can use frozen or fresh. I do not recommend canned because of the tunny flavor they tend to have, but do work in a pinch or if you enjoy that tinny flavor. Some do!
- Pie crust. Using read-made crust saves a ton of time. I use Pillsbury pie crust and have actually been asked for me recipe. Ha ha!
- Puff Pastry. I use Pepperidge Farms puff pastry dough. You can find it in the freezer aisle.
★ How to Make this Recipe ★
This Chicken Pot Pie is easy to make.
Here are the basic steps. You can get the full recipe with measurements and more detailed steps, below.
- Cook chicken with onion, carrots and celery in salted water.
- Reserve broth.
- Shred chicken once cooled.
- Press pie crust into baking pan. (Repeat to make two pies)
- Layer shredded chicken.
- Cook peas and carrots in butter. Layer over top chicken.
- Melt butter, whisk in flour, let bubble.
- Add broth, milk and bullion to sauce. Whisk to combine.
- Layer sauce over vegetables.
- Top with puff pastry.
- Bake.
That's it! For a homemade savory pie, this recipe is absolutely easy to pull off. Even if you're a novice cook.
Just follow the directions below and watch the how-to video before you start to get an even better feel for how this comes together.
★ Tips & FAQs ★
You can add and change up the flavor of this chicken pot pie by adding herbs and spices. You can customize the amounts to your liking but I've listed a suggested starting point for each in the recipe instructions below.
I personally like how this pie tastes with a bit of rosemary, thyme and garlic but you can change these spices to give this a different flavor profile.
You can use fresh or dried herbs. Of course, fresh herbs are typically more powerful and generally taste better to me but if you only have access to dried, that's OK. You will add them in when you melt the butter and that helps to reactivate the flavor.
Homemade Chicken Stock is quite easy to make. You'll actually make homemade chicken stock as a by product as you cook the chicken. Since you'll be using a whole chicken, your stock will be made with bone broth which has some extra health benefit and added flavor. (You can read more about the benefits of bone broth here). You'll be using fresh vegetables (carrots, onions and celery) to boost the flavor of your stock as well.
If you want to get fancy, you can make a lattice top for your pie. It actually helps vent the inside when bubbles form and it looks great too. If you've never made a lattice top before, check out this step-by-step tutorial.
Yes! You can absolutely save time and use a rotisserie chicken. I don't always cook a whole chicken myself and you don't have to either. When I find a whole chicken on sale, I'll cook the chicken myself so I can make homemade chicken stock.
But if I'm short on time, I'll just grab a cooked rotisserie rotisserie chicken. You can use the juices that come with a fresh rotisserie chicken (or it will look more like gel if you buy a chilled rotisserie chicken). You can use those juices (or gel), and add water + chicken bullion to create your chicken stock.
Now if you still want to make your own vegetable infused chicken stock, you can boil just the bones of the rotisserie chicken along with the carrots, celery and onion then add the juices or gel. Simmer for about 20-30 minutes and you'll get a nice flavorful chicken stock without having to cook an entire chicken.
If you're just in a hurry, you can also purchase ready-made chicken stock.
So, there are a lot of options. Choose what works best for you!
As I mentioned, you can make your own beef or chicken broth using bones or leftover juices. So I often will make a pot pie when I have leftover chicken, particular chicken that is still on the bone. I've even made a chicken pot pie from leftover wings! Alternatively, you can simple pair leftover chicken with chicken broth or even canned cream of chicken.
Yep! You'll just want to pair beef with beef broth. Everything else can stay the same.
Beef broth is a little harder to make homemade since you usually don't get bones with your beef, but I sometimes will make a large roast and then save the leftover juices in the pan to use as a base for homemade beef broth. If you add some beef bullion and maybe a splash of red wine, you can get a lot of flavor without needing the bones.
Yes. You can absolutely prep and then freeze this for an I-don't-feel-like-cooking night. Just cover your frozen pie with foil and you will need to cook it for about 30 minutes extra. Uncover it for the last 10 minutes or so to lightly brown the top.
This is a trick question because really, any vegetables would be great in this pie. Frozen or fresh. Any assortment or variety. The most common blend of veggies I think would be peas, carrots, green beans and corn. You can use canned veggies too. I actually really like the Veg-all mix. It includes potatoes creating the ultimately comfort food.
You can branch out and get more gourmet and try asparagus, spinach, squash, zucchini... anything that sounds good to you, will probably please your taste buds.
Changing up the veggies is also a good way to add variety when you make this recipe frequently.
You can use a traditional pie pan, a cast iron skillet, or you can use a square or rectangular casserole dish.
Since puff pastry comes in a rectangular shape, you will have to trim the extra dough when you use a round pie pan.
I really like pie pans with fluted edges because you don't have to worry about trying to make the edges look nice. Just press them into the shape of the pan and they look great every time.
Sometimes I use my pretty rectangular glass Pioneer Woman casserole dish to make this recipe and I make one large, deep dish pie. Especially if I'm feeding a large crowd.
This is a pretty heavy dish so sometimes I do not line the bottom with crust. This saves on carbs as well as cost.
A double crust is delicious so it's up to you!
I recommend using a regular pie crust on the bottom just because puff pastry is expensive and once you add the chicken and veggie filling, you don't really get the same puffiness as the top so might as well just use a regular pie crust.
If you opt to use a puff pastry bottom, Pepperidge Farms recommends that you press the puff pastry into the bottom of the dish then cover with foil and bake at 400˚for 25 minutes first. Before you add the chicken and vegetable filling and additional puff pastry top.
★ More Recipes You'll Love ★
Want more easy chicken recipes?
Browse all my chicken recipes and be sure to Pin your favorites for later!
Love this Puff Pastry Chicken Pot Pie? Then I think you'll also love my easy Rotisserie Chicken Pot Pie Soup!
This recipe for easy homemade chicken pot pie, made with puff pastry dough was featured on South Your Mouth and Meal Plan Monday!
Puff Pastry Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients
Chicken
- 3 lb whole chicken
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 4 cups water
- 2 ribs celery sliced
- ½ large onion quartered skin on
- 2 large carrots sliced
Sauce
- 1 stick butter
- Optional herbs: ยผ teaspoon of each sage, thyme, garlic
- ½ cup flour
- ½ cup milk
- 4 cups chicken stock (from cooking the chicken)
- chicken bullion to taste
Filling
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 cup peas and carrots or use mixed vegetables
Crust
- 2 pie crusts
- 2 sheets puff pastry dough defrosted
Mighty Mrs. is a #WalmartPartner.
Instructions
Chicken
- Place carrots, celery, onion and whole chicken in a crockpot or large pot on the stove. Rub chicken with salt.Pour in water. Cook for 4 hours on low or 2 hours on high or until chicken is cooked through and reaches an internal temperature of 165˚.
- When chicken is cooked through, remove, let cool, then separate meat from the bones. Shred the meat. Save 4 cups of chicken broth for later.
- Press each pie crust into the bottom or two pie pans. Layer chicken into each.
Sauce
- In a large pot or dutch oven, melt butter. Once melted, add optional herbs to the butter then whisk in flour. Cook for 2-3 minutes, allow butter and flour to bubble, stirring frequently. (this cooks the flour and eliminates a floury taste from the sauce). Next, whisk in milk until sauce thickens then immediately add cups of chicken broth. Bring to a boil, whisk until smooth then remove from heat.Add chicken bullion as needed to taste.
Filling
- In a small pot, cook mixed vegetables in 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until veggies soften. Layer veggies on top of chicken in pie pans.
- Pour the cream sauce over top of the veggies and chicken.Layer defrosted puff pastry sheet onto each pie. Cut away excess dough. Cut slits to vent.Brush each puff pasty top with beaten egg.
- Bake at 400˚ for 25-30 minutes or until puff pastry is golden brown and puffy. (This may take longer if your puff pastry is not full defrosted)
Video
Notes
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Sher says
To freeze the chicken pie, should I bake it with the puff pastry first or freeze it with puff pastry raw?
Angela G. says
Hi Sher, It's best to freeze before baking the puff pastry. Thanks for asking!