This week has been a stressful week because our daughter and her friend were in a serious accident Wednesday night when another driver ran a red light.  So for this dinner I took a few shortcuts to save some time and sanity.  Besides, a few shortcuts can be handy when you’re in a time crunch and running 4 dutch ovens at the same time.

As I’ve said before, my style of cooking is more faking it as I go, so here’s an approximation of how I made it this time. I am often combining flavors in my head as I go along, or seeing what ingredients I have on hand, and deciding how they can best go together for a meal.

For this dish I used a 12″ deep-style dutch oven.  My apologies to the “DO Purists”, but I’ve become a fan of the Dutch oven liners for making cleanup much quicker and easier.

Dutch Oven Chicken Pot Pie Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cube butter
• 1-2 spoonfuls of minced garlic (I used bottled)
• 1 1/2 yellow onions chopped
• 2 cups chopped celery
• 1/2 to 3/4 bag of Costco pre-cooked rotisserie chicken (cut into bite-sized chunks). [cheater’s shortcut] 
  • If not using the shortcut, you can use 3-4 chicken breasts or thighs cut into bite sized chunks.
• 2 large cans Cream of Chicken soup
• 2 tubes of Buttery Crossoiant Dough
• 1 roma tomato sliced
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley

Spray DO liner with non-stick cooking spray.

Melt 1/2 cube butter
Add garlic, onions, and celery and sautee

• (NOTE: if you’re not using the cheater’s “pre-cooked chicken shortcut”, you would add the raw chicken cubes and cook it here with the onions, garlic and celery until the chicken is completely cooked through.)

Add pre-cooked rotisserie chicken
Bring everything up to heat

Add 2 small bags of mixed vegetables and 2 large cans of cream of chicken soup
Stir and bring up to heat/low boil.  You want the filling to be good and warm to help cook the breading from the bottom.  If it isn’t warm enough it might be a bit doughy underneath.

This is the filling for your Chicken Pot Pie

When this is beginning to boil, stir it one last time and then reduce the amount of heat from below to avoid burning the filling.

Arrange triangles of croissant dough to cover the top of the filling.  If you’re feeling creative you can also add some embellishments like flowers, leaves, or ropes with the extra dough.  [on the picture above, you can see that I went for a couple flowers and leaves, and a rope around the edge.]  Just remember that parts with multiple layers of dough might not get cooked as consistently.

I usually also add a few tomato slices and fresh parsley as a garnish on top.

Place the lid back on the dutch oven, and place additional coals on the top to focus the cooking top-down onto the breading.

One of my favorite things is that beautiful buttery smell you get when you lift the lid and the bread is just about done.  Oh man!

Cook until the breading top of the Chicken Pot Pie is golden brown.

You may want to use either Chinet or at least double-plates or bowls because this can be pretty hot.

Serve and enjoy!

Here are a few other photos from other times I’ve made Chicken Pot Pie: