Baking a real pot pie

Pot pies have come a long way. Somewhere — probably during the height of the 1950s when every new pre-processed convenience symbolized a triumph over Communism — the pot pie changed. Along with the TV dinner, the Swanson's pot pie represented a clear step toward the Future, a golden age where ovens were self-cleaning, bikes had several speeds and laundry took women only a couple of hours.

And so even the humble Swanson's frozen chicken pot pie was progress, even if it involves bland, tasteless peas and carrots that resemble their former selves in color and shape only. Swanson's pot pies are good food when you've got less than $5, and it's a cold, lonely winter night in Wisconsin. But they're not real. They're little whimsical figments of the real thing. Making a real pot pie is a serious business, for serious people.

And it's worth the time.

Now, you could bake a pot pie just like Swanson's. That, however, sort of misses the point. The fact that such a recipe exists in the first place is, in fact, deeply disturbing. Those who would publish or use such a recipe seem to miss the basic point of Swanson's — they are a useful, shorthand abstraction of what an actual pot pie is supposed to be. So why bake it from scratch, thus adding "convenience" to the altar upon which "tradition" had already been sacrificed?

Heathens.

The real deal can be found at Epicurious, which, along with Cook's Illustrated, is one of the few online oases of culinary excellence. Their Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie is a hearty, nourishing cold weather treat. But more importantly, it's a kind of cooking and eating that may be totally alien to today's young people, what with all their chalupas and sushi and whatnot.

Here's the story with a real pot pie: it takes four hours to make. And it feeds you for about 10 meals.

The creation is a marvelous thing. You make dough. You chop vegetables. You stew enormous quantities of chicken meat — still on the bone — in a chicken broth, which then becomes at least twice as chickeny. (Cooking chicken in chicken broth: It's sick! It's cannibalistic! But it's really, really good. And you can even use some of the leftover hyperbroth for an improv chicken soup.)

And you get to make a delicious creamy gravy, which goes over the vegetables and chicken, which is in turn covered by your doughy crust and baked. And 50 minutes later, the whole thing emerges: An enormous, dreadnought-sized pot pie, with gravy abubblin' through the pre-cut vents in the golden brown crust.

Staring at its ungainly bulk brings on a feeling akin to... well, love. You think: "This thing is mine. I created it. I labored over it. I'm its dad."

The best part comes after the pie's genesis, however. Like certain spaghetti sauces, most lasagnas and all Thanksgiving leftovers, a real chicken pot pie not only maintains its integrity in the fridge, it improves. Through some sort of transcendant gastronomic alchemy, the gravy thickens, the chicken absorbs the flavor of the thyme, the crust moistens and the whole thing becomes intensely delicious. Ninety seconds in the microwave, and you're eating a thick slab of heaven.

Better still, you can regulate exactly how much of the stuff you reheat. There's "midnight snack" size. There's "lunch" size, and "dinner" size. And there's "I came home drunk and didn't really eat today and I don't want to die" size. Mmm.

So, grab a friend or roommate, buy some poultry and fresh produce, and bake one of these puppies. If you don't experience some kind of culinary salvation, you probably can't be saved.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)