Best-Ever Chicken Pot Pie | America’s Test Kitchen (S24 E11)



Chicken pot pie usually requires a major time commitment. Our trusty Dutch oven proved to be the key to an easier way.

Get our Chicken Pot Pie recipe:
Get exclusive access to every recipe, review, and more:
Sign up for our free newsletters to receive more delicious recipes, cooking tips, and exclusive content:

ABOUT US: The mission of America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) is to empower and inspire confidence, community, and creativity in the kitchen. Founded in 1992, the company is the leading multimedia cooking resource serving millions of fans with TV shows (America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country, and America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation), magazines (Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country), cookbooks, a podcast (Proof), FAST channels, short-form video series, and the ATK All-Access subscription for digital content. Based in a state-of-the-art 15,000-square-foot test kitchen in Boston’s Seaport District, ATK has earned the trust of home cooks and culinary experts alike thanks to its one-of-a-kind processes and best-in-class techniques. Fifty full-time (admittedly very meticulous) test cooks, editors, and product testers spend their days tweaking every variable to find the very best recipes, equipment, ingredients, and techniques. Learn more at

If you like us, follow us:

source

Similar Posts

41 Comments

  1. My goodness, so many steps in this are completely and utterly pointless! First of all what they're making is not a pot pie. Pot pites have a bottom crust. Then then they make and cut a lattuce to fit a round pot (pointless). They then and move it off of a baking sheet and onto a lid (pointless). I mean, It was already on a baking sheet, and there was no reason to make it round. Then they put the crust into the pot (pointless). Just to awkwardly cut it with scissors and move it over to a plate anyway. Ater spooning the stew over which was made more difficult because the lattuce was in the way. What is happening here? Just make stew. Bake lattuce. Put stew in bowl. Put lattuce on bowl. Done.

  2. This seems pretty brilliant I must say, I'm so hungry now. It's hard to imagine that topping as good as the test kitchens old version though, yes that topping is a pain, so sticky but dear-god it's so rich, so buttery!

  3. Why yes, that did end rather abruptly. The last 30 seconds:

    Keith: Oh, that puff pastry is so buttery and rich and flaky, the perfect complement to that thickened gravy underneath.
    Julia: Keith, this is spectacular. Thank you!
    K: You're welcome.
    J: So, if you want to make the most elegant chicken pot pie, start by making a lattice top using store-bought puff pastry. Use boneless, skinless chicken thighs in the filling, and bake the lattice on top of the overturned pot lid while the filling cooks. From "America's Test Kitchen," an elegant, lattice-topped chicken pot pie with spring vegetables.
    J: Definitely gonna make this for a special occasion. Like my parents — they would love this!
    K: They would love it.

  4. Bottom crust hill-diers: Why must a pot pie have one? If it has a bottom crust, isn't that just 'pie'? Otherwise, what's the distinction? A pot pie suggests the pot (or bowl or ramekin, etc) is the containment with a top crust that makes it a 'pie'.
    (Theory: 'Pot pie' is just fun to say'.) 🤷‍♂

    Also: Shepherd's Pie and Cottage Pie would like a word.

  5. I think you have to be careful when touting something as “The best ….ever”, even in YT land because you’re going to get a lot of comments like you see here. Especially when messing with a classic. Just call it an “updated” version or a “new twist”. And, of course, “better” is in the eye of the taster! No homemade crust takes two hours to make! 😂 If your goal really is to “streamline” just use a store bought crust. Making a lattice crust of any kind is not “streamlining”. While the puff pastry looks different than a traditional crust and, perhaps, provides some “wow”, it certainly does not give the same palate effect or taste. I think this might work better for small, individual serving dishes where the crust/filling proportions are less, but that’s not “streamlining”. Having a single crust as opposed to two also takes away from what many (most?) folks find desirable in a chicken pot pie – a means to soak up sauce, though one v. two is a hot debate. The idea of using the lid as a cooking surface for the crust is a fail for me. First of all, I think part of why your “filling” was a bit soupy was because it didn’t get to “cook down” with the lid on for that short amount of time. In a Dutch oven, over time, sauces will cook down and thicken. I don’t think you have time for that in 25-30 minutes. Normally your filling is thickening and steam is releasing through the crust. Filling ingredients are probably as hotly debated as one v. two crusts. Tarragon, bay and asparagus all together seems pretty overpowering IMO. Also, I have never left puff pastry in a 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Surely it would burn. So you’d need to take it out before the “filling” is done anyway and your thought that you’re somehow saving a dish or time or whatever is moot. I will say, if you are going to do this whole lattice top thing, I do like the idea of using the kitchen scissors to cut it for service. That’s the only positive here IMO.

  6. Two hours to make a pie crust? Oh please. Take one-half of a box of Jiffy pie crust mix. Mix. Roll out. Freeze the other half right in the box for the next pot pie. Filling: saute chopped onion in butter. Turn it into 1 or 2 cups of cream sauce, depending on how big your dish is. Add herbs and seasoning as desired. That's where the love comes in, and I don't mean soy sauce. Add leftover cooked chicken torn into small pieces. (It's probably a good idea to warm it up in the wave.) Add frozen peas or mixed vegetables, nuked to get rid of ice. Put it all in a dish. Cut vents in the crust. Bake at 375 till crust is nice and brown. Salt at the table as your blood pressure allows. I think the Jiffy box calls for 425, but why make the dish dangerously hot when a lower temperature will do the job?

  7. Chasen's, a famous Los Angeles restaurant, use to make chicken pot pies in is ~5" souffle dishes and then had a puff pastry crust rolled over the top and adhered to the top edge with a 1" hole in the center, so the puff pastry was suspended above the liquid. For the chicken base they would put in baby carrots, a baby turnip and some other small version of a vegetable all in a precious presentation. These were served annually at The Huntington Library Fellows dinner every year in the 1980s, so this, at least the baking of the crust, I think, was all performed in tents at the library. Those were the days, my friends.

Leave a Reply