1 Chicken Pot Pie

In November 2024 I drove home to celebrate my 22nd birthday with my family in Indianapolis. For the week leading up to my birthday, my mom had been asking me about what I wanted to eat for dinner that day. I had no clue what to pick; it’s always hard to decide on a meal that the whole family is going to enjoy. My mom threw out a couple of suggestions and one was her chicken pot pie. When trying to decide what to write about for this assignment I was really struggling because my family doesn’t have many traditional dishes, but then I remembered the chicken pot pie that my mom made for my birthday this year. She made it all the time when growing up, so I decided to interview Jennifer Pyrz, my mom, on the 18th of November 2024.

Growing up both of my parents worked full time, so when they got home they needed to be able to make something that would be easy to make and get us kids to eat our vegetables. My mom said that she just got the recipe off of allrecipes.com so it is definitely not a traditional dish in our family – but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t creating a new tradition right now.

The recipe she has used has grown and changed over the years. A couple years ago my mom discovered that she had a gluten sensitivity so she had to change her recipe slightly and adapt to the new phase of her life. Instead of simply using flour in the roux she now, “boil[s] the chicken with the vegetables, then make[s] a roux with onions, butter, and gluten free flour” (Pyrz 2024). The recipe has also been adapted to include one pie with a gluten free crust and one with a regular crust so that my mom can continue to enjoy one of our family’s favorite dishes with us. Here, I am reminded of Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson. Over the course of the book, Johnson (2024) tells the story of a single recipe that she made a thousand times and how the recipe evolved and changed. Johnson talks about the different methods of preparation and the different ingredients used. While conducting my interview my mom admitted, “I’m a cook who really only knows how to follow a recipe. So I have not adapted or changed anything. If I wanted something different, I would just find a new recipe online and try it out” (Pyrz 2024). This is how we have eaten for my whole life. My family is very by the book when it comes to what we eat on a daily basis and we are not big experimenters in our diet at home. This does not mean that the recipe cannot be adjusted in small ways though. It is interesting to see the way that the recipe has changed, mostly because, like Johnson’s recipe, it has adapted to necessity.

Back on my birthday, my whole extended family sat down to enjoy dinner and I had the joy of helping my mom serve one of my immediate family’s favorite meals that reminds me of home and growing up in a hectic household like ours. It is fascinating to me how quickly something can become attached to emotions and experiences. I guess it has been almost twenty years of eating my mom’s chicken pot pie recipe at home. When I look at it that way, it’s almost like my family has created our own new traditions even if they don’t feel like traditions just yet.

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cubed
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• ½ cup sliced celery
• ⅓ cup butter
• ⅓ cup chopped onion
• ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon celery seed
• 1 ¾ cups chicken broth
• ⅔ cup milk
• 2 (9-inch) unbaked pie crusts

How to Prepare:

1. Cube the chicken breasts into medium sized cubes
2. Boil the chicken and all of the vegetables for about 15 mins
3. Cook the onions in the butter then add flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed to create the filling
4. Once the filling has thickened, add milk and chicken broth
5. Put the chicken and vegetables and the filling into the pie crusts and then bake at 425 degrees fahrenheit until the pastry has become golden-brown and the filling is bubbly.

References

Pyrz, Jennifer. Interview by Sam Pyrz. Indianapolis, IN, 18th Nov. 2024.

Johnson, R. M. (2024). Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen. Pushkin Press.