This is arguably the best pot pie you’ve ever eaten thanks to the addition of smoked turkey!
There’s always leftover turkey. Even when I make smoked turkey I make much more than I think is needed so I can make pot pies with the leftovers.
You can make a pot pie by cooking fresh chicken, turkey, beef, or pork, perhaps even boiling them to make stock for the gravy, but to me, it is absolutely the best thing to do with leftover turkey or chicken or braised beef short ribs. Leftover pulled pork is also delicious if it hasn’t been soaked in barbecue sauce. Try it with apples, beans or potatoes, and carrots. Frankly, I look forward to the pot pies after Thanksgiving almost as much as the big turkey dinner. It is perfect for my Ultimate Smoked Turkey because there is almost always leftover meat and gravy.
The birth and evolution of pot pies
Interestingly, historians think that the first pies were not fruit pies, they were round dough pockets filled with savory minced meat or cheese. Bob Cratchitt could carry it in his pocket for lunch and eat it with one hand and work with the other so Scrooge wouldn’t harangue him for loafing. The Cornish pasty was a variation, a round of dough mounded with meat, onion, potato, and turnip, folded over and crimped. The Italian calzone is similar, the Turkish and Balkan burek is made with flaky filo and filled with cheese and veggies, as is the Spanish empanada.
The American variant, the pot pie, probably got its name from the small crock pot it was cooked in. Perhaps it was even a Boston Bean pot.
Frozen pot pies emerged after WWII as the frozen food industry took off. My Dad was a pioneer in the field, a food technologist who became a sales rep for Snow Crop in the late 1940s, one of the first successful frozen food giants. Pot pies were perfect for the times as the suburbs exploded, commuting times lengthened, and quick meals were eaten in front of the newfangled television.
Pot pies were probably the first thing I ever cooked. Frozen pot pies that is. If my parents had to leave me alone at night they would make sure there was a pot pie in the freezer and I would follow the instructions on the back of the box. They were warm and comforting, and I would eat them in front of the TV and wash them down with a taste of something purloined from Dad’s liquor cabinet. No wonder they conjure such fond memories. Eventually I got caught for watering the whiskey, but that’s another story.
I don’t remember when Swanson and the others stopped making frozen pot pies with a double crust (that’s pie jargon for a crust below and a crust above), but when that happened it was a rude awakening to a young man about the way the business world worked. I think it happened somewhere about the same time the Cubs traded future Hall of Famer Lou Brock and two nobodies to the Cards for three nobodies. My age of innocence had passed.
But as I look back, maybe that was not such a bad move. The single crust, not the Brock trade, that is. The bottom crust just drinks up a lot of gravy and just gets soggy. My wife and I now prefer our pot pies with a top crust only.
Smoked Turkey Pot Pie Recipe
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Ingredients
Method
- Meat. Start by cooking the meat. Grill or smoke it. You can even use beef or pork.
- Crust. To create the pie crust for the top, follow our foolproof all purpose pie dough recipe here. Make enough for top and bottom crusts for four pot pies. Put it in the refrigerator and chill it for at least an hour.
- Chop. Next, remove the ends and skin from the onion and coarsely chop. Coarsely chop the mushrooms. This should yield approximately ⅓ cup (26 g) of chopped mushrooms. Pull or chop the leftover turkey into bite sized pieces. Peel and core the apples and chop into marble sized pieces. Put the apples in a bowl of cold water so they don't brown.
- The filling. To make the filling, begin by melting the butter over medium heat in a saucepan. Add the mushrooms and onions, and cook until the onions are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the frozen vegetables and cook until they are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the meat, herb mix, and stock or water, and cook until warm. Turn to the lowest setting. Don't add the apples yet. Taste the filling, and add more salt, pepper, or herbs as you feel are needed.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (176.7°C).
- Sauce. Melt the butter in a small sauce pan over a medium heat. Add the flour a little at a time and whisk it in thoroughly so there are no lumps. Keep whisking until the mixture, called a roux, turns amber, but not brown. A roux adds flavor and complexity, and thickens the sauce. Turn the heat to high and immediately begin adding the stock in a steady stream, whisking all the while so the roux dissolves. Whisk another minute or 3 until the sauce gets a bit thick, perhaps the thickness of latex wall paint.
- Mix. Pour the sauce in with the filling and add the apples. Stir.
- Fill. Take the dough and cut it into eight parts. Make four parts slightly larger since it take more crust to cover the bottom and sides. Spread about 3 tablespoons of flour on a work surface, rub some on your rolling pin, and roll each quarter into a ⅛ inch (3.2 mm) thick disk, rolling from the center outward. Place the four larger disks in each bowl and press them in and up the sides. Make the tops and set the aside.Divide the filling among the four oven-proof bowls with a ladle. Place the top crust on top and if it hangs over the edge, that's ok. You can either let it simply hang over the edge, or roll it back until it is resting on the edge and make it look nice by crimping it or mushing it down with the tines of a fork. If you want to get fancy you can paint the dough with a thin layer of milk or egg white to help it brown and get shiny. Poke about 3 holes in the top crust with a paring knife to let the steam escape.
- Bake. Put the pies on a sheet pan to catch any overflow and place it on an upper rack where the top crust can benefit from the heat reflected off the top of the oven and darken. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the crust is golden. The actual cooking time will vary depending on how deep your bowls are.
- Serve. Remove from the oven and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes before serving.
