When the weather's cold (and even when it's not), nothing beats a homemade pie served with lashings of gravy. Crowd-pleasing comfort food at its best.
Roast chicken gets cooked with leeks, carrots and potatoes for a hearty base that then gets topped with puff pastry. A delicious mouthful every time!
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Yields:
6
Prep Time:
25 mins
Cook Time:
1 hr 20 mins
Total Time:
1 hr 45 mins
Cal/Serv:
566
Ingredients
2
red onions, roughly chopped
2
leeks, roughly chopped
200g
Chantenay carrots, trimmed
250g
baby new potatoes, halved if large
500g
skinless chicken breasts (keep whole)
1Tbsp.
olive oil
25g
butter
25g
plain flour, plus extra to dust
500ml
fresh chicken gravy (bought)
2Tbsp.
freshly chopped tarragon
500g
pack puff pastry
1
medium egg, beaten
Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan) mark 6. Put veg and chicken into a large sturdy roasting tin, toss through oil and plenty of seasoning. Roast for 25min or until chicken is cooked through.
Step 2
Lift chicken on to a board and put veg into a large bowl (set roasting tin aside). Carefully cut chicken into bite-sized pieces and add to the veg.
Step 3
Put roasting tin over medium hob heat and melt the butter. Whisk in flour and cook for 1min. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the gravy (scraping any sticky bits from base of tin). Return tin to heat and cook until thickened, whisking constantly. Add gravy and tarragon to chicken mixture and fold through. Check the seasoning and transfer to a rough 2.5 litre (4⅓ pint) ovenproof serving dish
Step 4
Lightly flour a work surface and roll out pastry until large enough to cover your serving dish. Brush edges of the dish with egg, lay pastry on top and crimp edges to seal. Trim to neaten (if you like). Cut a cross in centre of pastry to allow steam to escape. If you like, cut out shapes from pastry trimmings, stick to top of pie and brush with egg. Cook for 45min or until pastry is a deep golden.
In this recipe, we've cooked our chicken breasts from scratch, but it's a great way to use up Sunday lunch leftovers, too.
A base of leeks, onion, carrots and fresh tarragon adds layers of complex flavour, but feel free to add whatever seasonal vegetables you have to hand.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
