Did you know it was National Pie Week? Neither did I until I spotted a…
John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie
John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie is a recipe from his cookbook, My Kind of Food. It is a lovely creamy chicken pie made with mushrooms and leeks.
It takes a little time to make but is well worth the effort. Read on to find out how to make it.
If you watch MasterChef you will be familiar with John Torode who is one of the judges. It is interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes in restaurants, putting together meals to satisfy the crowd. The meals are usually pleasantly presented and involve exotic ingredients. They are not the sort of meals I would prepare at home.
Rather than quickly chopped vegetables and mad panic resulting in a perfect meal, my style is more slow chopping and doing things methodically. The meals have to fill the family as well and an elegantly presented dish does not do this.
Recently John Torode has bought out a new cookbook, called My Kind of Food. This book is full of recipes that John likes to cook at home, family crowd pleaser’s that will not disappoint. Alongside the book is a competition called Cook It/ Vlog/Blog It where bloggers are invited to try one of the recipes and cook it at home.
I could choose one of four recipes, My My Chicken Pie, Indonesian Fish Curry with Clams, Mussels and Beansprouts, Posh Curry Cutlets and Chocolate and Coconut Pie. My family love a pie so I decided to try the My My Chicken Pie.
John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie
There is nothing nicer than a hot pie served up a cold rainy day, which this one was. A hot steamy pie really warms you up and makes you feel comforted. The pie does take some time to make but was worth the effort. I made the filling on a Sunday, kept it in the fridge overnight. When I came in from work on Monday all I had to do was add the pastry and put it in the oven and tea was ready.
How to make John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie
To make the pie first you need to boil the chicken. For this you do need a large pan, I used a preserving pan. The chicken is cooked with milk, stock and bay leaves and boiled until it is coming off the carcass. The advantage of doing this is that the chicken cooking flavours the liquid which is also used in the pie filling. Once the chicken was cooked I made the sauce but cooking some mushrooms and leeks in butter and water until they were soft. This was then made into a sauce mixture bu adding flour, milk and the chicken liquid and cooking until it was thick.
The chicken was then added into the dish and all that I needed to do was add the pastry lid. This was the easy bit, the pastry just needed to be rolled out until it was the right size and added to the top. I cut a few holes in the pastry so the air could escape.
I also added a couple of pastry chickens to the top for decoration. At least I think they are chickens, they might be ducks. It didn’t actually matter as the pie was pronounced very tasty and my family gobbled it up in no time. It was a lovely warming meal.
John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie Recipe

John Torode’s My My Chicken Pie
Ingredients
- 1 large chicken about 1.5.kg
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 large onion
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 chicken stock cube
- 1 litre milk
- 2 leeks
- 300 g button mushrooms
- 50 g butter
- 50 ml water
- 50 g plain flour
- 200 ml double cream
- handful parsley
- 500 g puff pastry
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Make the filling. Place the chicken in a large pan.
- Chop the onions and garlic and add them with the bay leaves.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Add 500ml milk, the stock cube and add water until the chicken is covered.
- Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Remove chicken and leave to cool.
- Strain the cooking liquid and keep 500ml.
- In a saute pan add the butter and water.
- Chop the mushrooms and leeks and cook in the pan until soft
- Add the flour and stir until a paste is formed then slowly add the milk and reserved chicken liquid stirring until a sauce is formed.
- Bring to the boil and stir until thick.
- Take the skin off the chicken and chop into bits.
- Add the chicken to the sauce.
- Chop the parsley and add it.
- Pour the filling into a large ovenproof dish.
- Preheat the oven to 200C Gas 6
- Flour and board and roll out the pastry.
- Cover the dish and make some holes to let the air out.
- Brush with milk.
- Cook for 30-35 minutes until golden and bubbling
For other warming pie ideas why not try this historical apple pie recipe, Pippin Pie.
If you prefer your pies with meat this steak and ale pie is lovely and tasty.
Corned beef and potato pie is also an easy to make recipe that tastes amazing.
This sounds really tasty and just right for this time of year as Autumn draws in #TastyTuesdays
Wow Ali, this looks amazing. I am a massive pie fan so i have bookmarked this 🙂
Do let me know if you make it, would love to know what you think
That looks lovely – yum 🙂
Thank you, it really was nice
You are so right, there’s nothing quite as welcoming as a delicious pie! #TastyTuesdays
Perfect now the weather is getting colder
I absolutely love the duck decoration, this looks way too good to eat!
I did think they looked rather cute
I am drooling here, I’ve not had a chicken pie for too long! Thanks for linking up to #tastytuesdays
It was really tasty. Definitely one to make again