Evening, the house is tidy! Finally and we’ve just got back from going out for a meal with my parents for my Dad’s birthday 🙂 I’m so full I can barely move and don’t want to think about more food, but today’s recipe for chicken and bacon pot pies is one of my favourite dinners, it’s so flavourful and rich in flavour, and I just love eating pastry…
Serves 2
You will need:
> 2 small one person casserole pots or a small pie dish, however I made the amount of pastry to just fit the small dishes I had, so you’d probably need more if you used a bigger dish.
> Saucepan with a lid
> Rolling pin
Ingredients:
For the pastry:
> 2oz plain flour + extra to dust
> 1oz butter
> 15ml water
For the filling:
> 1tbsp oil (I used olive oil)
> Knob of butter
> 1 chicken breast, sliced into small chunks
> 1 onion, sliced thinly
> 3 rashers of bacon, diced
> 2 heaping tbsp chicken gravy granules (I know, I know, cheat’s gravy! I didn’t have time or chicken bones to make my own!)
> 2tbsp single cream
> Water, added to the consistency you want your gravy
> salt and pepper to taste
Method:
> Make the pastry first as it needs time to rest. Put the flour and butter into a small bowl and rub together with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs.
> Add the water in a teaspoon at a time and mix with a wooden spoon until a dough forms.
> Wrap it in cling film and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
> When you are ready to make the filling, get the pastry out to rest.
> Look how cute these pots are?!
> Anyway, to make the filling, preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and heat up the oil and butter in a large saucepan or wok. Place the onion and bacon in the saucepan and place the lid on so that the onion and bacon softens. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
> Add in the chicken and stir, replace the lid and leave for 5 minutes to colour the chicken.
> Add in the gravy granules and as much water as you require to make the consistency of gravy you like.
> Coat everything then stir in the cream. Add salt and pepper to taste.
> Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer for 10 minutes to thicken and cook through.
> Whilst the chicken is cooking, flour the worktop then cut the pastry into 2 pieces and roll them out as circular as you can make them. They need to be a little bigger than the dish ideally.
> Once the chicken is cooked, split it between the two dishes.
> Cover each dish with pastry and then using a sharp knife, cut around the edge of the dish to make the pie top.
> I had a bit of leftover pastry so I cut the first letter of our names out to put on our pies 🙂
> Just a little something extra I thought I’d add 🙂
> These dishes aren’t the easiest to cut round what with the handles as you can see by my dodgy cutting out, but the filling is covered so that does me 🙂
> Place in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry is lightly browned and crispy.
> Serve immediately, we served ours with mash, but they would work well with rice or on their own.
Enjoy 🙂
