Herbed biscuits stand in for pie crust in this deconstructed chicken pot pie. Herbes de Provence, garlic and wine give the American classic a French accent. Recipe below.
I recently had lunch at Dine, the restaurant of the Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro hotel. I wasn’t there because of my food writing credentials. Marion’s sister Lena works in the travel industry. The hotel had invited her to lunch; I was her plus one.
Historically, hotel restaurants have offered safe, if less than inspired meals to weary business travelers and wary tourists afraid to play restaurant roulette in a strange city. That’s beginning to change, though. Increasingly, hotels are bringing in new chefs and inviting them to play with their food.
You won’t find culinary high wire acts in most hotel restaurants; they still have to appeal to a broad range of customers and palates. But you will find more focus on freshness, more attention to sourcing and inventive flavor combinations and presentation. What hotels are finding is that this approach can make them appealing to local diners too.
At Dine, executive chef Erik Dybvik has created breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner menus of “high-style comfort food,” as the hotel website describes it. Menu elements such as onion marmalade, duck fat roasted potatoes, farro, rapini, smoked trout mousse, caramelized fennel and white bean ragout bear out that description.
The grilled ahi burger I had, served with red onion, oven roasted tomato, arugula and roasted garlic mayo, was delicious and generous. But it was Lena’s lunch that caught my attention, chef Erik’s take on chicken pot pie, served not in a crust, but on a scallion biscuit. For some time, I had been thinking about making something close to traditional chicken pot pie, but replacing the crust with a layer of drop biscuits. Chef Erik’s approach—preparing the biscuits and filling separately, then plating them together—was a revelation, not only easier to prepare, but easier (and more attractive) to serve and eat. I left our lunch with a full belly and a recipe idea to make my own.
Meat pies date back to the Roman Empire, but the pot pie is distinctly American—hearty, comforting farm food. Biscuits share that same rural American heritage. Combining the two seemed a natural. It also offered the opportunity to play with them a bit.
When I was a kid, almost any meal that included gravy ended with me putting a slice of white bread on my plate and smothering it in gravy. Whatever else had been served, this was the star of the show to me. Then when I started to cook, I learned that if you added herbs and wine, gravy suddenly became sauce. An aha! moment.
That’s what I did with my deconstructed pot pie. I added garlic, herbes de Provence and wine to the filling, giving everything a vaguely French quality. And I added fresh thyme to the biscuits, which delicately flavored them throughout. Many herb biscuit recipes include chives (chef Erik used scallions in his), but I wanted the extra biscuits to be at home with butter or jam.
The drop biscuits are in keeping with the rustic roots of pot pies and are far easier to make than rolled biscuits. You can prepare the filling a day or more ahead and gently reheat it while you make the biscuits. Or you can get the filling started on the stovetop and then make the biscuits as it simmers.
Deconstructed Chicken Pot Pie
Serves 4, with extra biscuits
For the filling:
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into polite bite-sized pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
unsalted butter
4 ounces button mushrooms, sliced (or cremini)
1 medium yellow onion, copped (or 2 shallots)
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (or homemade stock)
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup half and half (or whole milk)
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 cup frozen peas
For the biscuits:
Makes about 9 biscuits (this recipe owes a great deal to America’s Test Kitchen)
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 cup buttermilk
Make the filling. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large, lidded sauté pan over medium flame. Add the chicken to the pan and season lightly with salt and pepper. Very lightly brown the chicken, stirring frequently, about 5 or so minutes. You don’t want to brown it completely—just get rid of all the pink on the outside. Transfer chicken to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Add a tablespoon of butter to the pan (and a drizzle of oil, if needed) and sauté the mushrooms, stirring occasionally, about 4 or 5 minutes. Transfer to bowl with chicken.
Melt a generous 2 tablespoons of butter in the pan, swirling to coat. Sweat onion in the butter until it begins to soften, just a 2 or 3 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid browning. Add garlic and herbes de Provence and stir to combine. Clear a space in the center of the pan and sprinkle in flour. Whisking constantly (this tool is awesome for the job), lightly brown the flour, incorporating the onions into the mix. Cook the mixture a good 5 minutes, continuing to whisk constantly (this will cook out the raw flour taste, creating a blond roux or thickening agent).
Add the broth, wine and half and half to the pan, scraping up any browned bits. Return the chicken and mushrooms to the pan and add the carrots and peas. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Toward the end, you may want to only partially cover the pan to allow the sauce to thicken. Taste and adjust seasonings.
Make the biscuits. Once the filling is simmering and doesn’t need your attention, preheat the oven to 475ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or else lightly grease a baking sheet). Melt butter in a small saucepan, then transfer to a small bowl to cool slightly. Mix dry ingredients and thyme in a large mixing bowl.
Measure the chilled buttermilk into a 2-cup measuring cup. Add melted butter and stir until clumps form. Stir buttermilk mixture into flour mixture with a rubber spatula just until the ingredients are incorporated. At first, it will seem as if you need more liquid; just keep scraping the bottom of the bowl until you’ve worked all the flour into the dough.
Using a greased 1/3-cup measure, scoop mounds of dough and drop them onto baking sheet, spacing about 1-1/2 inches apart. Press on them with your fingers to slightly flatten. Bake biscuits until the tops are golden brown, 12 to 14 minutes (mine were done in 12, but that could be our screwy oven). Remove from oven and let rest on the baking sheet for a few minutes.
Assemble the pot pies. Slice 4 still warm biscuits in half, placing the bottoms in shallow bowls. spoon the filling over the biscuit bottoms and top each with a biscuit top. Serve, offering additional biscuits with butter and preserves.
This is so much more appealing than the traditional, crust-laden and gooey pot pie. Each element gets its due, and the biscuit provides just enough “crust” to dunk in the sauce from the chicken. Inspired!
I love pot pies, but sometimes the crust is a little too much to handle, like Lydia said. I have a feeling that I won’t want to eat anything stew-like in the summer, so I better make this soon!
I agree with Lydia and Michelle that too much crust is too much in this dish. A biscuit adds the perfect amount. I used to love pot pies when I was a kid (and when I was a kid and eating those frozen ones, I always felt cheated if my mom bought the kind with only the top crust, and not the bottom crust as well!), but it’s been years since I’ve had a good one. I’ve actually been thinking about pot pies lately, so your post is timely inspiration. And yes, I remember pouring gravy over a piece of bread (white, of course) too. Good post – thanks.
Thanks, Lydia! Giving individual ingredients their due is why I didn’t finely dice the chicken or the carrots.
I hope you enjoy it if you make it, Michelle.
Kitchenriffs, those frozen store bought pot pies are the ones of my childhood memory too. Every once in a while, I’ll glance longingly at them in the freezer case still. But just like Hostess snowballs, I know they wouldn’t live up to my remembrance of them.
I join you and Kitchenriffs, Terry. One of my secret not-so-guilty pleasures for many years beyond childhood was the good ole’ Swanson Chicken Pot Pie. I knew it wasn’t great food, but it was oh so comforting. Tried it again a few years ago, and sadly I’d lost my ability to enjoy it. Now this looks absolutely wonderful, with the also-herbed biscuit a perfect companion and topper!
Last night due to time restraints I picked up a Costco store made chicken pot pie for dinner. My husband loves them but like everyone here has said the crust was too much for me.
Your recipe makes more sense. But I’ve never quite wrapped my head around biscuits. They always seem so dry which I guess would nicely soak up a lot of the gravy.
Is this same same sort of dough used in chicken and dumplings?
The few times I’ve had that it was like a biscuit, I may have made that a long time ago.
Thanks, Ronnie Ann! I suspect the failings of long ago pleasures to live up to their memory is largely due to our own changing tastes, but at least partly due to changes in the things themselves.
Randi, this biscuit dough is similar to chicken and dumplings dough, but contains more butter, at least from the recipes I’ve checked. Butter is the key to these biscuits being crisp and crumbly on the outside and moist inside, I think. Of course, I’ve always been a huge fan of biscuits and not so much of dumplings. I think of them as biscuits with a clammy handshake.
Oh, what a lovely idea! I think I would present it a little differently though, maybe with shredded chicken inbetween the biscuits. I am not sure about peas:) Maybe a spoonful on top of bright green peas?
Katrina—So you would deconstruct it even further. What I was going for in my presentation was sort of the look of a pot pie when you break through the crust and see the filling.
This very type of dish has been on my mind to make. So glad I clicked over here. Looks wonderful and not so heavy, but still comforting and I love making biscuits.
I’m one of those gravy bread people too, so I’m pretty sure I’ll need two biscuits.
Oh god, this is probably not the place, not the place at all, to admit that in times of deep personal turmoil, I reach for a Swanson pot pie. Your lovely deconstruction, however, would be wonderful on a stress free day.
Angela, I hadn’t made biscuits in too long before making this recipe. They are definitely back on the radar screen now.
Jeri, I am delighted to have discovered a couple of fellow “gravy bread people”—we also ate biscuits and gravy a lot when I was growing up. I order them occasionally when breakfast spots offer them, but they rarely live up to childhood memories.
That’s okay, Altadenahiker. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Okay, this is not a problem at all. Sounds pretty good, actually, as comfort foods in stressful times go.