Chicken pie with butter crust

In our house, leftover roast or grilled chicken usually becomes chicken salad for sandwiches the following day. We had leftover roast chicken from last Sunday’s lunch and it had been sitting in the fridge for two days, wrapped tightly in cling film. The reason: we ran out of mayo and both my husband and I just keep forgetting to buy a new jar. As unbelievable as it may sound, I was in the supermarket early this afternoon and I still forgot to buy mayo. When I got home and saw the chicken still sitting in the fridge, I decided to make some chicken pies.

My original plan was to bake the pies in a muffin pan. You know, like real pies, but small. I didn’t want to make an empanada look alike. That was how I started doing it, actually. After rolling the crust and cutting them into circles, I tried fitting them into my muffin pans. But it wasn’t easy. The sides wouldn’t fit snugly and my perfect circles were turning into oblongs from pushing, pulling and pinching. I re-rolled the dough, re-cut my circles and laid them all on a cookie sheet. I decided I would place a tablespoonful or so of filling at the center of each circle, cover it with another circle of dough, pinch the sides, pierce the tops and brush all over with egg wash. At least, that was something doable for me.

I finally got the right proportions for making pie crust too.

To make these chicken pies, you will need the following:

For the filling :

2-3 c. of chopped leftover cooked (roast, grilled, fried) chicken
2 medium-sized potatoes
salt and pepper
chopped parsley
2-3 tbsps. of butter

For the crust :

2 c. of all-purpose flour
2/3 c. of butter
1/2 tsp. of salt
3 tbsps. of iced water

Start by preparing the filling. The filling needs to cool completely before going into the crust. If you fill a pie with hot filling, the steam will trap too much moisture inside the crust and that will make your pie soggy.

Peel the potatoes and cut into half-inch cubes.

Heat the butter in a non-stick frying pan. Cook the potatoes until lightly browned, stirring occasionally. Add the chopped chicken meat. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until the chicken is heated through. Add the parsley, stir, then turn off the heat.

A little note here. I didn’t add onions to my filling because I used roast chicken which already had all the flavors I wanted. If you’re using boiled or steamed chicken, you might want to add more spices and aromatics than I did. Chopped carrots, celery, bell peppers and onions are good choices.

So, cool the filling and prepare the pie crust.

In a large mixing bowl, cut the butter into small cubes — as small as you can. Mix the flour and salt together. Add to the butter and mix thoroughly with your hands, rubbing them together until they resemble coarse meal. Add the water and mix until the dough can be formed into a ball. Wrap your ball-shaped dough in cling film and chill for at least an hour.

Take the dough out of the fridge and remove the wrapping. To make rolling easier, divide the dough into two portions. Take one portion, roll out as thinly as you can (an eighth of an inch is fine). Cut the dough into circles. I did this the primitive way. I took a bowl, held it upside-down and used the rim to cut the dough. I was able to make six circles, five inches in diameter, from the first half of the dough.

Place the circles on a cookie sheet. You need not grease the sheet because your dough has lots of butter. But, to be safe, I lined the cookie sheet with baking paper.

Place a tablespoonful or two of filling on each circle of dough.

Roll out the rest of the dough (and whatever trimmings there are from the first half) and cut six more circles. Use them to cover the bottom half of the unbaked pie with the filling. Just lower the circles on top of the filling and pinch the edges with your fingertip. Then, take a fork and use the ends of the fork thines to further seal the edges together.

Whisk together an egg and about 1/4 cup of milk. Brush the tops and edges of the unbaked pie with the egg-milk mixture. Then pierce the tops of the pies with a fork. Some cooks do this before brushing the crust with the egg wash but I like doing it after to make sure that the holes stay open and not get clogged with egg wash.

Bake the pies in a preheated 180^oC oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until the tops and edges are lightly browned.

You really need to cool the chicken pies for at least 15 minutes before eating them. The steam from the filling can really burn your mouth.