Turkey Pot Pie (or Chicken Pot Pie; you pick!)

No matter how fancy your palette may be, once in awhile we all crave something simple that reminds of our childhood and for my money, Turkey Pot Pie is hard to beat!

I have many thoughts about pot-pie.  They should be super creamy, and without potatoes!  I seem to remember (growing up) that the cheaper pot-pies always had tons of potatoes and less meat.  That's just wrong!  Let's fix this:

You Will Need (for TWO pies):

• 2 deep dish pie crusts (9" or bigger, thawed and unrolled)
  
• 2 Large Squares of Frozen puff pastry dough (thawed and unrolled)
  
• 1 Stick Butter
  
• 1 Cup finely diced red onion
• 1 Cup finely diced carrots
• 1 Cup finely diced celery
• 4 Cups leftover turkey, (I like Smoked) light and dark meat, diced or shredded (or both!)
• 1/2 c. flour
• 4 Cups Turkey (or Chicken) Stock
• 1.5 Cups heavy cream (No substitutions!)
  
• 2 Cups frozen peas (set out to room temp)
  
• 3 Tsp Thyme
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

Set the oven to 400 degrees!  While it's pre-heating, let's assemble... For this recipe it is extremely helpful to have all of your ingredients pre-measured!  Get everything diced, shredded, measured out and ready to go before you light the burner, it will make everything so much easier later, because things happen fast!

Drop your stick of butter in a dutch oven or very large pan.  If you're paying attention to my pictures, you'll notice that I had to switch pans midstream... It was a Rookie Mistake and it will NOT happen again!  I mean, I have at least four dutch ovens, what was I thinking?  sigh.  I digress.  Melt your butter and saute the carrots, onions, and celery over medium-high heat until they're tender.

When the veggies are nice and tender, drop in the turkey meat and stir to combine.  Now sprinkle the flour over the entire mixture and stir it in very well.  Stir continuously for about 5 minutes.  When you detect a faint "nutty" aroma from the flour starting to cook, pour in your turkey stock. 

 

Once the turkey stock is in, do NOT stop stirring!  You don't want to give the flour a chance to clump.  Flour abjectly refuses to play along with liquids unless you dissolve it first in some fat (like you did with the butter).  So cook and stir stir stir until you have a nice thick bubbly mixture like you see in this video (above).

Pour in the heavy cream and the peas.  Keep stirring and reduce the heat to medium.  Keep stirring for 5-10 minutes while this final mix thickens!  Then kill the heat and move your pot to a safe place on the counter where you can scoop the goodness out and into your pie-shells.

If you follow this blog, then you know I HATE making pie-crust.  To those who enjoy it, I salute you!  For these pot-pies, I bought two frozen pie crusts, and two frozen Puff-Pastry squares.  Press the pie crusts into your own pie pans.  Use a measuring cup to scoop the goodness into the pie shell.  

Now then; gently lay the square of puff pastry over the top.  Cut the corners so that the pastry fits the top of your pie, and press the pastry dough into the pie crust,  Take you time and do the best you can.  Cut two slits on the top for the steam to vent.

Slide both pies into the middle of your hot oven, and place a cookie sheet in the rack below the pie.  The goodness will want so badly to escape and it will bubble out between the pie layers and land below.  The problem with the pie goodness is, it has cream.  Cream is dairy, dairy has sugar, and sugar will burn... So catch whatever goodness sneaks out on a sheet pan so it doesn't burn all over the bottom of your oven!

Give the pies 30-40 minutes in the oven.  The pastry dough will puff and rise and everything will turn golden brown!  Pull them out and let them cool and "Set" for about an hour.  Then it's all over but for the scooping and eating!  My oh my, sho am good...