Last week, I read an article on PopSugar about Chrissy Teigen’s chicken pot pie soup recipe belonging to Soup Hall of Fame. As i read the recipe, it validated one of Internet’s solid truths—anyone can post anything online and and call it the best of whatever. It’s just up to you to believe it.
I’ve been making chicken pot pie and its soup version since forever. I’ve done it often enough that i have innovated the crap out of it. Any method that can create the exact same thing at half the time is what innovation dreams are made of. As good as Chrissy’s recipe is, I doubt that such method will take less than 20 minutes. MINE CAN! Not to mention that mine, like most of my favorite dishes, use only one pot…
This is my cast of characters:
Preheat toaster oven. Yep, just your trusty little toaster. Set at 400.
Per pie crust box instruction, add 2 tablespoons of cold water to half the package, form into ball. You don’t need a food processor for this, just your own God-given two hands. I have tried frozen pie crust, it is not as flaky. This pie-crust box is the closest thing to that of my right-from-scratch recipe.
You can be OC about this and form it into squares, but trust me, it doesn’t make a difference. I put a foil on top of the pan then sprayed it with butter. This saves a lot of time when doing clean-up. I cannot tell you enough how much I hate scrubbing grease stains from my pans.
While this bakes, put the butter in the pan then start mincing the chicken breast then cut up one potato into cubes. When butter is hot add the onion-celery mix.
Cook for about 2 minutes, high heat.
Most recipes will use another pan to make a roux (cooked flour), to thicken the soup. Here’s a universal truth: any stock that is added to flour cooked in butter WILL THICKEN. It doesn’t matter if celery and onions are in the mix, that baby will come out thick and hearty.
All this time, keep it on high heat.
As soon as it comes to a boil, turn down to medium heat then cover the pot for 10 minutes.
Just as the soup is wrapping up….take a peek at the pie crust.
This is one hearty comfort food that you can make in a flash. And because I am not married to John Legend, PopSugar will never publish my version and crown it as a Soup Hall of Famer….haha. Bitterness aside, I actually like Chrissy Teigen. I find her funny and pretty. If I didn’t have a gazillion unread cookbooks already, I would buy one of hers too.
Anyway…this is what we’ll have for dinner. D will enjoy my commentaries about the article and will probably offer to sing “All of Me” to make me laugh, to which I will have to politely decline. We’ve had enough of rain.
