POT PIES

WE WANTED TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO streamline the process of making a pot pie. While it will never be a 20-minute meal, pot pie should not take all day to prepare. We started our testing with chicken pot pie and then decided to see if our experiences in the kitchen could e adapted to turkey and vegetable pot pies.

We began by determining the best way to cook the chicken. We steamed and roasted whole chickens, and we braised chicken parts. Steaming the chicken was time-consuming, requiring about one hour, and after that time the steaming liquid still didn't have enough flavor to make a sauce for the pie. Roast chicken also required an hour in the oven, and by the time we took off the skin and mixed the meat in with the sauce and vegetables, the roasted flavor was lost. We had similar results with braised chicken: it lost its delicious flavor once the browned skin was removed.

Next we tried poaching, the most traditional cooking method. We tested this method with bone-in parts and boneless, skinless breasts. Though both the parts and the breasts were poached in canned broth, we thought the long-simmered poaching liquid of the parts would be significantly better. But in our comparison of the pies, we found no difference in quality, and we were able to shave one-half hour off the cooking time (10 minutes to cook the breasts compared with 40 minutes to cook the parts). For those who like either dark or a mix of dark and white meat in the pie, boneless, skinless chicken thighs can be used as well.

We decided to tackle the vegetables next, so we made pies with raw vegetables, sautéed, vegetables, and parboiled vegetables. We found that the vegetables sautéed before baking held their color and flavor best, the parboiled ones less so. The raw vegetables were not fully cooked at the end of baking time and gave off too much liquid, watering down the flavor and thickness of the sauce.

Our final task was to develop a sauce that was flavorful, creamy, and of the proper consistency. Chicken pot pie sauce is traditionally based in a roux (a mixture of butter and flour sautéed together briefly), which is thinned with chicken broth and often enriched with cream.

Because of the dish's inherent richness, we wanted to see how little cream we could get away with using. We tried three different pot pie fillings, with one-quarter cup of cream, one-quarter cup of half-and-half, and one cup of milk, respectively. Going into the oven, all the fillings seemed to have the right consistency and creaminess; when they came out, however, it was a different story. Vegetable and meat juices diluted the consistency and creaminess of the cream and half-and-half sauces. To achieve a creamy-looking sauce, we would have needed to increase the cream dramatically. Fortunately, we didn't have to try it, because we actually liked the milk-enriched sauce. The larger quantity of milk kept the sauce creamy in both color and flavor.

To keep the sauce from becoming too liquid, we simply added more flour. A sauce that looks a little thick before baking will become the perfect consistency after taking on the chicken and vegetable juices that release during baking.

As we expected, turkey pot pie followed the same rules as chicken pot pie. We found it most convenient to use leftover turkey meat, although if you can find turkey breast tenderloins in your supermarket, they may be prepared in the same way as boneless chicken breasts. As for vegetable pot pie, we found that a chicken pot pie minus the chicken tasted too light–it was more like a side dish than supper. To remedy this problem, we increased the amount of vegetables, especially hearty vegetables such as potatoes. Adding other root vegetables and dried mushrooms also helped to give vegetable pot pie enough heft.

Up until this point, we had been topping our pot pies with pastry dough. Although these crusts were delicious, we wondered if there were quicker, simpler options. Biscuits worked beautifully, although they were not much easier to prepare.

We tested phyllo pastry, which we thought would result in a light, flaxy crust. To the contrary, we were surprised to find that the phyllo topping resulted in a tough, almost membrane-like cover. We then tried the frozen puff pastry found at most supermarkets. We were quite surprised at the lovely, puffed, light crust that appeared. After testing this pastry with a butter glaze, an egg wash glaze, and no glaze, we were happy to find that our tasters were unanimous in their preference for the plain pastry. The other advantage to using the puff pastry is the almost-perfect size of the sheets. They fit in a standard casserole dish without trimming.