Chicken & Onion Pie

Aug 23, 2024 | 0 comments

What do I need to make a chicken and onion pie

chicken and onion pie, with peas.

For a 20cm pie, serving 4, you will need

Pastry
200g flour, I always use self raising, but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference
100ml vegetable oil
about 100ml water

Filling
100g cooked chicken
3 stuffing balls
a very large onion, or 2 medium ones
half of the gravy made with the juices when we had a roast chicken dinner

How do I make a chicken and onion pie

Make the pastry

Prepare the pastry using the oil method .
To do this, put the flour in a bowl, tip in the oil.
Then add the water. You may need a little more, or a little less, all flours are different.
Simply stir gently with a tablespoon, and it will come together in a few seconds to make a soft dough, don’t over mix, or the pastry will toughen.
If it is looking a little dry while you stir, add a little more water. If too wet, add a little more flour.

For the filling

Saute the onion until transparent.
Chop the chicken into small pieces and add to the pan, together with the gravy and the chopped up stuffing balls.
Stir it well and season if necessary.
If you don’t have any gravy available, add a little water to make some sauce. Leave the mix to cool.

Line your pie tin

Meanwhile, divide the pastry into rough halves.
One half needs to be slightly bigger than the other.
Using the bigger half, flour your work surface and roll out to fit a 20cm pie tin and line your tin with it.

Put the chicken and onion filling into the lined pie tin.
Roll out the other piece of pastry and top your pie with it.
Make a steam hole and bake in a medium oven for about half an hour.

If your filling is still warm, it’s not the end of the world. I often make pies while the filling is still fairly hot and it’s fine.

We had this with sweet potato mash, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.

What changes can I make?

If you like steamed puddings, this can be done exactly the same, but use a pudding basin and steam it for 2 hours. I would do that in a slow cooker to save the fuel. For an authentic flavour, use suet to make the pastry
Any meat can be used in place of the chicken.
- turkey
- pork mince
- bacon
- corned beef
Use salmon and prawns instead of chicken
Use leeks in place of the onion
Add other vegetables to the mix
- diced carrot
- a handful of peas
- or sweetcorn
- some cooked mushrooms (they need to be cooked first as they give off a lot of water)
Add some fine chopped herbs to the mix
add curry paste or powder
add soy sauce and/or fish sauce
if you don’t have roast chicken gravy, add tomato sauce, brown sauce or tomato paste
Add flavourings to the pastry, a tblsp of mustard, a handful of cheese, some fine chopped herbs
Or line the flan dish with half the pastry, pile in the mix and bake as an open topped bacon and sweetcorn tart.
Or make individual 10cm pies or tarts.

All the recipes in the making a chicken last a week series

Roast chicken, 400g chicken, gravy, with stuffing, 4 portions
Risotto, 140g chicken, onion, half the the stock, some vegetables butter and parmesan, 4 portions
Pizza, 117g chicken, tomato sauce, maybe some stuffing, 4 portions
Spicy Pasta Bake, white sauce, 120g chicken, onion, spices, stuffing, 4 portions
Tart, 100g chicken, onions, sweetcorn, couple of eggs, no cheese, stuffing, 4 portions
Pie, 100g chicken, some of the gravy, onion, maybe some sweetcorn or mushrooms, maybe some stuffing, 4 portions, this recipe
Soup with the remaining half of the stock, red lentils, onion, spices, 4 portions, this recipe