Christmas Chicken Pot Pie

I really thought I had shared a post on here before on chicken pot pie, but after a quick search on here I found out I haven’t! The reason I thought I’d shared it on here before is because my mom has been making this chicken pot pie recipe for as long as I can remember. At least 20 years.

Let’s flash back to my childhood. I have family in Canada and have been to visit many times (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa). When I was young, my aunt and cousins lived in a small town near Montreal and near where she lived was a shop that sold pies. One of the pies they would make was chicken pot pie and it was so good that whenever we went up there we would buy pies to take home (we always drove). But since we only went to up there every few years, my mom started making chicken pot pie at home.

I’ll get in to the recipe in a minute, but the reason why I called this “Christmas” chicken pot pie, is because I put stars in the shape of a Christmas tree on the top crust. I saw a photo from Williams Sonoma with the idea and thought it was so pretty! Mine is definitely nowhere near as elaborate as the Williams Sonoma one, but you get the basic idea from mine. Literally as basic as you can get from the inspirational photo haha. The Williams Sonoma version has a pile up of cut-out pie crust stars layered up to make an almost 3-D Christmas tree on the top of the pie. I didn’t have any really small star cookie cutters, my nesting set is only small, medium, and large. The star cookie cutter I used in the photos here was the smallest I had. If I had a smaller one I could’ve layered a bit more, but I didn’t so my star Christmas tree is pretty flat and one-dimensional. Nonetheless, I think you can get the gist of it!

For the filling, we use rotisserie chicken that’s been pulled apart, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, 1 can of cream of chicken soup, 1 can of water, frozen peas & carrots, and 1 potato.

Boil the soups and then remove from heat. Add in the chicken, 1 potato (diced and cooked), and peas & carrots (frozen). Stir all together and add pepper.

Then take a pie crust – I use a refrigerated pie crust – and put it in the bottom of a pie dish. Pour the filling in and top with another pie crust. Crimp the edges of the pie crust together and make 4 slits on the top for venting. Normally, we brush with an egg wash at this point and bake for about 40 minutes to an hour at 400. However, this time I took a 3rd pie crust and cut out stars to place on top in the shape of a Christmas tree. Since I was putting the tree on top, I made the slits for venting off to the sides of the top pie crust. Once the stars were on, I brushed with the egg wash and baked as usual.

Put foil around the edges so they don’t burn. At about 30 minutes I also laid strip of foil over the stars because they were starting to get brown and I didn’t want them to burn.

This is easy to make ahead too. Bake it earlier in the day, leave it out, and then cut individual pieces of the pie to reheat in the oven. To reheat and serve individual slices, i like using these mini pie plates.

Do you like chicken pot pie?