The Best Chicken Pie You’ll Ever Make

0:00 There aren't many things as comforting as a chicken pie,

0:03 but too often the chicken is dry and the sauce only tastes of cream.

0:06 We're here to show you with a few chef techniques how

0:08 you can take the humble chicken pie to a whole new level.

0:11 I was reading Clarity's cookbook the other day and they've

0:13 got an amazing recipe for a chicken pot pie,

0:15 a casserole with a lid on, give or take.

0:18 But we're going to be taking the inspiration from their recipe and applying

0:20 it and putting it into a fully lined chicken pie with shopboard pastry.

0:26 So you can definitely achieve this one at home.

0:28 To cook this chicken, we're going to spatchcock it.

0:30 So, we're going to flip him over and taking a sharp pair of scissors.

0:33 We're going to hold the parson's nose, which is this little sticky bit out here.

0:36 We're going to hold that in front of us and we're going to take some scissors

0:39 and we're going to snip down either side

0:41 of that coming out down to where the wings are.

0:43 So, the reason we're going to spatchcock it is to flatten out the chicken.

0:47 It's going to decrease the cooking time.

0:49 Also, it means that the legs, which take longer to cook than the breast,

0:52 are going to be almost like raised up slightly,

0:54 meaning the leaner breasts are going to be slightly covered

0:57 throughout the cooking process and potentially stop them from drying out.

0:59 Effectively, the spinal column with the parson's nose there.

1:01 We're going to chuck that onto the tray to roast as well.

1:03 And effective, you got your chicken here with the wings.

1:06 And what we're going to do is we're going to flip that back over.

1:08 And then we're just going to press that down.

1:09 You're going to leave all this skin and sort of stuff attached.

1:11 Just wrap that around the breast.

1:12 Pop that onto a tray.

1:13 Give them a good season and pop it into roast.

1:15 We're going to pop that into the oven 190.

1:17 We'll check it after about 30 minutes.

1:19 Okay.

1:19 So, once your chicken is fully roasted, should look a lot like this.

1:22 So, what we're going to do firstly is I'm going to pour off the chicken fat.

1:25 Now, this is super important.

1:26 We're going to save this for later.

1:28 We're going to use this chicken fat as a way to thicken our finished sauce.

1:32 The original recipe that we found for this dish, as I mentioned earlier,

1:34 the Clarages recipe, it utilized only really the breast in the actual pie.

1:39 And then it used all of the thighs and the drumsticks purely to make the sauce,

1:43 which we thought was a bit of a waste.

1:45 And especially when talking about doing this recipe at home,

1:47 we wanted to tweak and make sure the recipe was

1:49 as cost effective as possible for when you're making it at home,

1:51 but also super super delicious.

1:53 Very similar to how you just carve a normal chicken.

1:55 If your chicken is slightly under or on the pinker side,

1:58 that's absolutely fine because this pie is going to get fully cooked.

2:00 Again, just like you're having a Sunday roast chicken,

2:02 you can really get in there and remove all of the get all

2:05 of that meat off the bone and then

2:07 all these sort of bones and connective tissue.

2:10 Save all of that cuz we're going to use all of that to enrich our sauce.

2:14 I'm actually going to remove the skin.

2:16 I'm just going to dice that up as well.

2:18 And that's going to go in with our bones just

2:20 cuz the skin can get a bit flabby once it's,

2:22 you know, obviously submerged in the sauce.

2:24 But I'm just going to take our breast

2:25 and just just dice this up into nice large chunks.

2:28 You could do this recipe with a just a boughtin rotisserie

2:31 chicken like one of the ones you just get from the supermarket.

2:33 So I've just diced up my breast there plus

2:35 the the few bits I've scraped from the carcass.

2:37 Going to place that into a container.

2:39 I'm just going to do exactly the same process with the legs.

2:41 We want to ideally have it like as chopped

2:43 as you can rather than like completely shredded.

2:45 So when you try and remove it off the bone and as large a chunk as you can.

2:49 Okay.

2:49 So all my meat is then diced up and place that all into my container.

2:53 That's ready to fill our pie later.

2:55 So as you can see, one of the benefits

2:56 of buying a whole chicken is you get all of this.

2:58 So then I'm just going to break up the rest of those bones.

3:01 Increase the surface area as much as possible.

3:03 Spread it out nicely.

3:04 And I'm just going to give that put that back in the oven

3:06 for another sort of 15- 20 minutes just to get as dark as possible.

3:09 So now we've got our chicken prepped, we've got our bones working.

3:12 Now we're going to start the main body of the pie.

3:14 So what we're going to make here is an enriched chicken sauce or a sauce suprem.

3:19 So it's a really classic French sauce, one of, you know,

3:21 based off a foundational mother sauces which we know you guys love.

3:26 So I'm going to take a large pan, put on a low heat,

3:29 going to add a little touch of oil and a couple of knobs of butter.

3:31 And I'm going to take some banana shellots.

3:33 And these schlots are going to add a lovely sweetness to our sauce.

3:36 And this is we're just going to sweat these off

3:38 in the butter sort of on a medium high heat.

3:41 Um and then we're going to caramelize in the pan.

3:44 Really sort of developing that natural umami flavor.

3:47 So Claraj is one of the main sort of five-star hotels in London.

3:51 Very synonymous with um you know with fine dining and very high quality food.

3:57 Been on their sort of on their main hotel

3:59 menu for for for for years and years and years.

4:02 So schlots in this nice pan.

4:04 Touch of salt as always.

4:05 is you want to make sure you're seasoning throughout the cooking process,

4:08 not just at the end.

4:08 And I'm just going to let this sort of caramelize down on a medium low heat.

4:12 So, here's my chicken bones I've just re-roasted on, but you're

4:15 literally just getting free flavor by buying a whole chicken.

4:18 Cannot describe to you how much more beneficial it is.

4:20 That's going to make our sauce and our pie filling so much more flavorful.

4:23 We've got all that chicken fat free,

4:24 which you don't necessarily need to use all for this recipe.

4:27 You can save that, put it on your roast potatoes.

4:29 You can use it to cook vegetables in.

4:31 It's just again just another really useful product.

4:33 To my schlots, I'm going to add in a crushed garlic,

4:35 some rosemary and some thyme and a cheeky bay leaf.

4:39 Give that a little sweat.

4:40 Just get those aromomas going.

4:41 Some white wine.

4:42 Delaze the bottom of the pan.

4:44 You know the deal by now.

4:44 And then reduce that by at least half.

4:47 Once the wine's reduced, then we're going to go in with some stock.

4:49 Then we're going to go in with our roasted chicken bones.

4:52 So, basically making it, we like to call this an enriched stock.

4:55 But most supermarkets you can get stock now,

4:56 but if you didn't want to and you only had stock cubes, that's absolutely fine.

4:59 Just dilute the stock cube.

5:00 The only difference I would say don't add

5:02 any seasoning to the sauce or the stock filling

5:05 until the end just cuz these stock cubes can

5:07 carry a little bit of extra salt in them.

5:09 So you wouldn't want to add all your salt into your vegetables

5:11 and then add your stock cube and have it too salty.

5:13 Bones go in.

5:13 The only the only extra step I'm going to do here is once this stock is boiling,

5:17 I'm going to put some of the stock onto

5:18 this tray to remove all of that flavor off the bottom.

5:20 You can see how dark that water is that's gone in there now.

5:23 So it's lovely.

5:23 And just scrape that into your stock.

5:25 This will probably reduce by at least half.

5:27 Basically, we're going to reduce it to get the right flavor.

5:29 Once we've got the flavor we're after, we're then going to thicken it later.

5:32 So, while my sauce is reducing,

5:34 we're going to get on with the garnish for the pie.

5:36 Smoked bacon, button mushrooms, and then some more shellot.

5:39 So, with the schlots, I'm just going to cut them nice and chunky,

5:41 sort of half cm slices.

5:43 We always like to cook the garnish separate to the filling.

5:46 Sort of in traditional methods,

5:47 you quite often roast off your garnish and cook it in with the pie mix.

5:51 But by cooking it separately, we can really maximize the flavor of each

5:55 of our garnishes and also most importantly, the texture.

5:57 So, just going to take our mushrooms out.

5:59 We're going to quarter.

5:59 Some of these we're going to cut into quarters,

6:01 some of them into halves, depending on the size.

6:02 And we're going to roast all of this garnish

6:05 in more of that reserved chicken fat.

6:07 Tiny bit of oil in the pan.

6:08 And the first thing we're going to go in with is the smoked bacon.

6:11 I'm just going to sweat that bacon off on a nice low heat.

6:14 So, while the garnish is going, I'm just going to finally chop some nice herbs.

6:17 So, here I've got some taggon and some parsley.

6:19 We're not going to put these into the sauce cuz we want

6:21 the to retain the freshness on these herbs as much as possible.

6:24 So, I'm just doing the just chopping this up.

6:26 Getting ahead now.

6:26 Going to add that into my chicken.

6:28 The bacon's nearly there now.

6:30 And get the last little crispiness on that sauce is almost ready.

6:32 The sauce was cooking for about 30 35 minutes.

6:35 What I'm going to do now is I'm going to add some cream into this stock.

6:38 Bring it together before I pass it.

6:40 Basically enriching with cream is what the sauce suprem mean.

6:43 So it's going to add the cream, bring that back to the boil,

6:45 simmer it for a couple of minutes, and then pass it off.

6:47 So now my bacon's cooked.

6:48 I'm just going to put the pan on a slight

6:50 angle cuz I want to leave that fat in the pan.

6:52 We're going to use that fat to color off our shellots and our mushrooms.

6:55 Okay.

6:55 And then I'm going to go in my schlots

6:56 with a little bit of the chicken fat as well.

6:58 Okay.

6:58 So once our sch slots are getting a little bit

7:00 of color on, we're next going to go in with the mushrooms,

7:02 little bit of chicken fat.

7:03 So all these little points we're adding in here,

7:05 the reduction of the of the chicken stock,

7:07 the roasting of the bones, the caramelizing of the veg separately,

7:10 all these little points are really going to all elevate going

7:13 to come together beautifully at the end to really elevate this pie.

7:15 So we're going to pass off the sauce now.

7:17 So once your sauce is passing off,

7:19 we're just going to let this sort of drain for 5 10 minutes.

7:21 really let all of those juices come out and just

7:24 gently push through with the back of your spoon.

7:26 Sauce back into our pan.

7:27 So, the next stage, our garnish is pretty much ready now.

7:30 Like, you just know that's going to taste good.

7:32 Look at the state of that.

7:33 So, we're going to take that.

7:34 We're going to put the sauce back on.

7:35 And then we're just going to keep reducing it until we got that finished flavor.

7:39 Two secret ingredients.

7:40 One, not so secret, pretty standard.

7:42 Dijon mustard.

7:43 Dijon mustard and chicken.

7:45 Perfect combination.

7:46 Marriage made in heaven.

7:48 Second one, bit of a curveball.

7:49 Like it or love it, Marmite.

7:51 Bear with me.

7:51 You don't want to taste Marmite.

7:53 It's purely there for that like savory umami hit.

7:56 It's just going to add depth and richness to our finished sauce.

7:59 If you haven't tried cooking with Marmite before, highly recommend it.

8:02 It's like a secret little store

8:03 cupboard essential that can really elevate things.

8:05 If you don't have Marmite, you can get Veggie Mite in Australia.

8:08 Bob also works fine or yeast extract.

8:10 And what it is is all the glutamates within the yeast that develop

8:13 on the palette and give you this amazing amazing richness and funk to the sauce.

8:17 Oh, so good.

8:17 Touch more salt.

8:18 And then I'm going to take some of that sauce

8:21 and then add it to the mustard creating a slurry.

8:24 Just going to help the mustard dissolve into the sauce.

8:26 That marmite also adds a lovely color to the sauce.

8:29 Flavor's good.

8:30 Lovely acidity from the mustard.

8:31 Going to give that another couple of minutes to reduce.

8:33 Uh the way we're going to thicken it called a bur manet.

8:35 You might have seen us make this before,

8:37 which is effectively where you mix flour usually with butter.

8:40 In this recipe, we're going to use

8:41 the chicken fat instead of butter for more flavor.

8:44 So, what I've got here is the flour,

8:45 and I'm just going to add the chicken fat to the flour and make a nice paste.

8:49 Usually about equal quantities to the flour and just mix it into a nice paste.

8:52 That paste will then be able to let

8:54 the flour dissolve into that sauce without getting any lumps.

8:57 So, there we go.

8:57 You got a lovely chicken fat bur mane there, which we'll use.

9:01 So, I'm now going to turn my heat down super low and I'm

9:03 going to go in with a spoon of our chicken fat burman.

9:06 And I'm just going to whisk that in on a low heat

9:08 and the sauce should thicken as if by magic in front of your eyes.

9:12 Now at this stage you want to have it

9:13 on nice and low so the sauce doesn't catch.

9:15 You can already see it thickening.

9:16 It should almost be pretty much instantaneous with the burman.

9:19 Probably get the full effect of it after say maybe a minute or two.

9:22 Now a touch of fresh lemon juice.

9:24 Heat off.

9:24 And I'm just going to give this a final taste.

9:27 My work here is done.

9:29 Give that a minute to cook out.

9:30 Okay.

9:30 Garnish is going to go in.

9:32 And the chicken.

9:33 It might be a bit thick now.

9:34 There's still a lot of moisture left in the chicken and the vegetables itself.

9:37 So once that's cooking inside the pie,

9:38 it's going to release a little bit of water as well.

9:40 Going to chuck it in the fridge just to cool down while we get the pie ready.

9:43 It's always a bit easier to make the pie

9:44 when the filling is not piping packing hot.

9:47 And you thought I'd forgotten, but I wouldn't leave you high and dry.

9:49 I wouldn't do that to you guys.

9:51 Sort of man would I be if I created a video without a cartoon?

9:54 While our product is cooling down to avoid getting a skin.

9:57 So, there you go.

9:59 Now, for the pastry,

10:00 we've got two different types today just to show you how to prepare both.

10:03 So, this is a pre-bought a block of puff pastry.

10:06 Comes like this.

10:06 And then for the lid, we're going to be using a pre-bought puff pastry,

10:09 but a sheet of puff pastry.

10:11 I'm just going to flour my bench slightly.

10:12 Obviously, this is the ring mold that I'm going to be using.

10:15 So, it's a classic sort of cake tin.

10:16 What's that?

10:17 Sort of 9 in sort of a few inches high as well.

10:19 So, I need enough pastry to sort of cover that whole rim.

10:22 So, I'm going to need a big old block.

10:23 So, we're going to start by rolling out this sheet of puff pastry.

10:25 So, what we're going to do is a technique called riging.

10:27 Basically, where we're going to push down on the pastry

10:30 in equal pressure across it for the first stage of the rolling.

10:33 And I'm just going to turn it 90° and then do the same.

10:35 And effectively your pastry is growing in surface area,

10:38 but we're not overworking the proteins in the flour just

10:41 for the sort of the first half of the rolling.

10:43 You could use large sheets of puff

10:45 pastry instead of having to do this technique.

10:47 That's absolutely fine.

10:48 So, a little bit of flour.

10:49 Now, I've got a nice large surface area.

10:51 Now, I'm going to roll it nice and quickly to the shape that's required.

10:54 So, whenever you're rolling pastry,

10:55 you want to make sure that you're rolling towards you

10:57 and away from you rather than from side to side.

10:58 So, we're looking for sort of couple of millm thick.

11:01 I'm going to put my my mold on the on here.

11:03 I'm just going to cut around it.

11:05 giving myself at least that that amount of depth plus a bit extra.

11:08 So, I'm going to go nice and large.

11:10 Any extra space pastry you can obviously always save for decoration.

11:12 So, I'm just going to place the pastry onto the back

11:14 of my hand and just lower it into the mold.

11:16 Try not to use your fingers too much and use like more

11:18 the palm of your hand so you don't potentially tear the pastry.

11:21 Lift up the pastry with one hand and then with the back of your hand,

11:23 just push that pastry into the corners of the pie

11:25 mold or tart case or whatever you're using.

11:27 And obviously, eventually you'll have a a lip

11:29 where the pastry sort of doubles up.

11:31 And at that stage, that's when you want

11:32 to just use your thumb and forefinger and just push

11:35 the pastry against the side and get it to be

11:37 the same thickness as the pastry you've rolled out.

11:39 You just want to go all the way around.

11:40 Once you've got it roughly in, you can then go around in a bit more detail.

11:43 You trim off a little bit of extra pastry

11:45 just to make it a bit easier for yourself.

11:46 Then you can now start to make the shape a bit more detail.

11:49 So you're going to go around, push into the corner,

11:50 and then push against the side of the mold.

11:52 And just do that all the way around.

11:53 So you're sort of going pushing down into the bottom

11:55 and then pushing flat against the side of the mold.

11:57 And then where you got the layers here where the where the pastry is doubled up,

12:00 then you want to make sure you're really pushing it to get it nice and even.

12:03 You don't want any any massive bits of pastry,

12:05 but it's not going to cook evenly.

12:06 Probably want to go around at least two times, I would say.

12:08 Making sure not to push down too far so that you get any breakages,

12:12 obviously, cuz obviously all the sauce will then leech out.

12:14 And now we're going to pop that in the fridge to set before we add the filling.

12:16 So, my pastry case has just been uh been

12:18 chilling for a little bit just to firm up nicely.

12:20 So, the next thing we're going to do is going to make get our lid ready.

12:23 So then I'm going to take one sheet

12:24 piece of pre-bought pastry and then just cut around.

12:28 Pop that in the fridge just to chill.

12:30 And we're going to bring out our filling.

12:33 So our filling is sort of like set nicely.

12:35 Sort of just coming down to fridge temperature now.

12:37 So the reason we're chilling this down is we want the puff

12:39 pastry to start rising before there's too much steam coming off the filling.

12:43 If I was to put this in hot or even like slightly warm,

12:45 uh the the the steam would start to cook

12:48 the pastry from the bottom, make it soggy.

12:50 We want the pastry to start rising before the filling starts getting hot.

12:53 So, I'm going to got my lid back out.

12:55 So, I'm going to take a little bit of egg wash.

12:56 Just go around the tops of the pie.

12:58 We want a bit of a gap on this pie.

13:00 We want to make sure the pastry rises as much as possible on this pie.

13:03 So, I'm going to egg wash the bottom

13:04 of this pastry lid as well, just help it stick.

13:07 So, then we're going to lift up our pastry lid, place it on top,

13:10 and then we're going to go around and just crimp the two pastries together.

13:13 Do a couple of stages.

13:14 First of all, we're just going to press it together.

13:16 You got a nice bit of overhang.

13:17 So, this stage is super easy.

13:18 Once we've got rid of the extra, we're then just going to use a fork and just

13:21 go around and crimp the edges nice and hard.

13:23 Just going for a very, nothing fancy with the presentation,

13:26 just a nice classic, something that's easy for you to achieve at home.

13:29 But this is just going to go and make

13:30 sure all those edges are really well sealed.

13:32 Any last little bits to tidy up, just nick those off with a sharp knife.

13:35 So then we're just going to glaze our pie all over,

13:37 nice and generous with the egg wash.

13:39 And then most importantly, we're going to put a little a couple of air holes,

13:42 a couple of slits in the top of the pastry,

13:44 just so some of the steam can escape.

13:46 We're really after maximum volume.

13:48 Nice bit of crunchy sea salt all over the top.

13:50 So, we're going into the oven 220, 10 minutes,

13:52 and we're going to drop it to 180 for another 30 minutes.

13:54 This been in the oven now for 40 minutes in total.

13:59 Pop the hood.

14:00 Barker, man.

14:02 Flavor overload, dude.

14:03 The filling, as we knew, we put so much effort into it.

14:06 With that puff pastry casing, you get the best of both worlds.

14:10 You get the perfect sauce, perfect mix of the meat,

14:12 and you've got a lovely casing on the outside and on the top,

14:14 which is always an added bonus.

14:16 A dish riddled with history from one of the most iconic hotels

14:20 in all of the UK and super achievable to do at home.

14:25 Highly, highly recommend you give this one a go.

14:28 Your guests and your family will not be disappointed.