CHICKEN PIE STEW
Whether you have this as a stew or add it into a pie, it’s a must make. Blending this will also make the most beautiful Chicken, Bacon & Vegetable Soup- perfect for leftovers
PREP 20m
COOK 5/8h
TOTAL 5/8h
SERVES 8-10
Ingredients
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 leek, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 3 celery sticks, diced
- 4 garlic cloves, diced
- 700g potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 600g chicken thighs, cleaned and diced
- 800ml hot water & 3 chicken stock cubes
- 200ml cold water & 3 tbsp cornflour
- 1/2 tsp oregano
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
Ingredients to finish-
- 50ml cold water
- 1 tbsp corn flour
- 100ml double cream
- 150g smoked bacon, I found cooking bacon in spar for £1, I used half the pack diced up and fried until golden.
Method
Add all of the ingredients from the first ingredients list to your slow cooker, turn to high and cook for 5 hours, 8 hours on low.
To finish this you’re going to add the ingredients from the ingredients to finish list- the cornflour and cold water, mix well and add, this will slowly thicken whilst you cook off your diced bacon until golden. Add in the bacon and double cream.
Mix well and serve as stew with crusty bread and butter or I’ll see you tomorrow for the flaky pastry recipe reel where you can make it into a pie.
FLAKY PIE PASTRY
The recipe below makes half of what’s in the reel- enough for one large regular cake tin style pie or 2 lids for large pies. You could also make two full pastry (bottom and top) pies if in smaller pie dishes. This also freezes well.
Firstly- this pastry is basically shortcrust but I add eggs for multiple reasons. It helps to keep it flaky (along with my chop method for the butter), it doesn’t go rubbery and is ideal for pie with wet fillings.
Ingredients
- 250g salted butter
- 650g plain flour
- pinch salt
- 1 medium egg
- 200ml ice water- plus 8 tbsp extra
Method
Add your flour to a hard flat surface and chop up your butter into cubes- keep the butter as cold as possible.
Like regular pastry you can use the rub method to combine the butter and flour, I like to use a scraper (you can find this on my Amazon storefront on the website if you want to get one) then I just go to town chopping directly down until the butter is a fine breadcrumb consistency and well combined with the flour. The main reason for this is to keep the butter cold, it allows the pastry to be extra flaky too.
Next make a well in the centre and add your whisked eggs, ice cold water and salt, slowly you want to mix and combine this with the butter/ flour mixture.
I use the scraper for this as you can catch the run off and work quickly.
It will start to resemble pastry and at this point but you will need to add extra water to create the dough, add 1 tbsp of the additional water at a time, knead until you can press some together in your hands and it sticks.
Keep mixing until you have a lovely soft dough, scrape everything off the surface and if it’s a little wet use some flour to create your ball of dough.
Essential- this needs 30 minutes the rest in the fridge, preferably 2 hours.
Once rested roll your dough into 2/3rd’s cm thickness and line your dish.
If you’re making the large cake tin style pie, bake at 180°c for 50-55 minutes until golden and full cooked.
If making a smaller pie in a pie dish, it will take around 45 minutes to cook.
Don’t forget to brush with beaten egg to get that glorious golden colour.