Home-Made Chicken Pie

Home-Made Chicken Pies Hot from the Oven

After years of living in the Middle East, my newly South African children embraced our pie culture, courtesy of our English colonial past, with gusto. As someone who always likes to know precisely what is in anything, and prefers not to give my children processed food if I can help it (though like all of us, busy mums sometimes do what they can and not what they must), it behoved me to learn how to make my own. The following is courtesy of quite a bit of playing around and learning, as always, from those out there.

Some Notes on Methodology:

• Don't be put off by instructions such as grating the butter in a cheese grater; while it is slightly more time-consuming initially, it cuts down so much on the overall processing time it is more than worth it. 

• Grating the ice-cold butter also helps to ensure a soft pastry, since overworking your pastry will make it very tough. Pastry work has to be cold, quick and deft. 

• Placing the flour in the freezer may appear daft, but actually represents a scientific means whereby you can help make the pastry flaky. Generally, what is advocated is that you first coat the butter in flour, then place it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes and then work with the result. However, as a busy mother of three I found it just added far more time to the process so now I just haul the self-raising flour out directly from the freezer where I store it, it keeps the weevils at bay and works like a charm - and saves time. 

For the vegetarians amongst us, the filling is essentially the same, minus the chicken. 

Pie Pastry Recipe

250 grams butter direct from fridge 

500 grams self-raising flour – keep in freezer*

Ice-cold water (but make sure no ice is in the water)

Pinch of salt

*You can make self-raising flour by adding between 5 and 8 (opinions differ) teaspoons of baking powder to 500 grams of ordinary flour)

Pre-heat oven to 180 °C (350 °F, gas mark 4)

Take flour out freezer, cut butter into a few slices, coat in flour. Grate this butter on the coarse setting of a cheese grater. Mix the grated butter and the flour. Using the paddle beater of a food mixer (do not pulse in a food processor), mix dry ingredients until they resembles a sandy, yellow porridge. (If it is taking too long, or you don't have a food processor, slowly rubbing the butter between your thumb and fingers does the job perfectly). Slowly, tablespoon by tablespoon, add the water into which the pinch of salt has been dissolved, tablespoon by tablespoon until the mixture just comes together. Then place in fridge for 20 minutes (I usually place a damp tea-towel over it, I can't stand how much professional chefs use clinging plastic to cover everything - surely we home cooks can take a bit more care over our environment, after all).

When working with the pasty, work deftly and quickly – the colder the pastry, the better and more flaky the pie crust will be. We tend to use proper small pie pans – they take more gravy. Roll out a disc of pastry to line the pan, then another for the lid. Fill casing with pie filling: 

Roast Chicken with Vegetables and Gravy

Coat the edge of the case with a beaten-up egg, put on lid, making sure it is sealed properly. With the tines of a fork, make a number of holes in the lid to allow steam to escape else the pressure build-up can leave you with a beautiful pie crust and the filling on the floor of the oven. Coat lid with egg mixture so the outside browns nicely:

Lidded Pie Cases Coated with Egg and Pricked with a Fork

Place in pre-heated 180 °C oven for 20-30 minutes – check how brown the pastry is and you should start to smell the lovely aroma which is a give-away as to when it is ready. If in doubt, taste a piece of crust. Since the filling is already cooked, it is just too easy!

You can also freeze them once baked. When needed, I let them thaw overnight in the fridge and then lightly microwave in the morning before packing into the kids' lunch-boxes. 

Recipe for Chicken Pie Filling

Whenever we roast chicken (with a lemon inside), we always roast two. Any leftover chicken is stripped that night and the bones and left-over skin discarded. In a pan, make extra gravy using chicken stock and maizena (corn flour). Place a mixture of frozen vegetables direct from the freezer into the pan, bring to the boil, check consistency of gravy – add more cornflour if need be. Finally, add the stripped chicken to the pan and make sure there is enough gravy to coat it all. Allow to cool, put into fridge. Next day, make the pie pastry and the pies. Important note: use the chicken pie filling cold – if you place hot mixture into the cases, you will end up with soggy pies that fall apart as you take them out their cases. With pastry, coolness is all.

A Pie - Perfect for Packing into a School Lunch.

Dare I say – it’s as easy as pie?