Leftover Chicken Pie

Make a leftover chicken pie

There are many ways to use up your Turkey or chicken leftovers after a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. 

One of our favourite ways is to make a pie of some sort. There are many pies you can make with leftovers, like a chicken and mushroom pot pie, a chicken ham and leek pie or a creamy chicken and ham pie, for example, depending on what you have leftover, of course.

But perhaps a more unusual solution is this recipe for a leftover chicken pie, which contains ALL the leftovers from your meal the day before (within reason!). [My Mum always used to use the leftovers to make some healthy soup together with the chicken broth boiled from the bones of the chicken.]

We quite often have a roast chicken dinner on a Sunday as our Sunday roast. As there are only three of us living together, this is often what we will eat at Christmas as well, if we are not together with other family members. A turkey for the three of us would just be too much food and it would get wasted.

Hence I call this a leftover chicken pie, but you can just as easily replace the word ‘chicken’ with ‘turkey’ for the sake of this recipe.

What to include in your leftover pie

Chicken or turkey is of course the main ingredient. Just the best bits of white meat you can find, but feel free to use some of the dark meat as well if you like. We never have any dark meat left over, as my daughter eats all the chicken legs when we have the roast!

In the example that I show in these photos I used some sage and onion stuffing, some baked carrots and some roasted potatoes. I would be tempted however to use just the more solid ingredients.

I would imagine that not everything from a roast dinner would be suitable, like Yorkshire Pudding or bread sauce, for example, as they are likely to make everything a bit soggy.  

But you could, of course, also include other ingredients like onions, parsnips, sprouts, ham or whatever else would feel happy sitting in a pie with the other ingredients! Some sprouts would definitely go well in this pie, but like the dark meat we never have any leftover as my wife will always finish them off when we eat the roast. She loves them to bits!

I declined also to use the remains of the gravy in the sauce, as I wanted to have a tasty creamy sauce in the pie that is not like the gravy you eat with a roast. But hey – it’s your leftover pie, use whatever leftovers you want!

The quantities mentioned in the recipe were enough to fill the pie dish in the photos, which is about 2 litres capacity. Feel free to adjust the quantity of sauce to suit your amounts of leftovers and number of mouths to feed.

I have used ready-made puff pastry in this recipe, but you could also use a shortcrust pastry if you prefer. It’s up to you. 

When to eat your leftover pie

Cooked chicken can be kept safely for a few days in the fridge. It can also be frozen and eaten later. But beware that you can only reheat cooked chicken once. Because of this, we will always use up our leftover roast chicken within a couple of days.

In fact, normally we will make the pie the next day and eat it the same day. Bear in mind that you should cook the rolled pastry shortly after rolling it out, or it is likely to dry out. So you should only really fill your pie dish no more than a few hours before you are ready to cook it.

You can always prepare the pie filling the day before, and keep it covered in the fridge until you are ready to assemble the pie and cook it.

I hope you enjoy making this recipe. If you did, please let me know how you get on in the comments section below!

How to make leftover chicken pie

Leftover Chicken Pie

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This delicious leftover chicken pie recipe is a great way to use up your leftovers from a Sunday chicken roast, or Christmas & Thanksgiving

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes

Total Time 1 hour

Ingredients

• Leftover chicken from a roast chicken dinner
• Any other roast dinner leftovers (e.g. stuffing, carrots, potatoes, sprouts)
• 40g butter
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 120g mushrooms, chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 150ml dry white wine
• 2 tbsp flour
• 250ml chicken stock
• 100ml cream
• Tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 egg
• 1 roll of pre-packaged puff pastry
• Salt and freshly ground black Pepper

Instructions

1. Let your puff pastry acclimatize to room temperature. Butter a suitably sized pie dish and fill with a layer of pastry, leaving enough on the edges to crimp later.
2. Separate the chicken (or Turkey) meat from your chicken carcass. Cut into bite-sized pieces and put into your pie dish.
3. Select any leftover vegetables and accompaniments you may have, chop into suitable sizes, and add to the meat (in these pictures I had some sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes and baked carrots left over from the day before). Mix well and season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Then make the sauce. Melt the butter in a skillet and add the chopped shallot. Sautee for about 2 minutes. Then add the mushrooms and sautee for a further 5 minutes.
5. Add the garlic and the leaves from the thyme sprigs (removing the stalks) and cook for a further 3 minutes. Then stir in the flour and cook for a further 2 minutes, mixing well.
6. Add the chicken stock and white wine and bring to a simmer for about 3-4 minutes, until the sauce has thickened.
7. Finally, remove from the heat and stir in the cream and parsley. Taste the sauce and season if necessary to taste.
8. Then pour the sauce onto the meat and vegetables, before adding the lid of pastry to the pie, crimping it closed and decorating as you see fit.
9. You can keep covered in the fridge for a few hours until ready to cook. Then brush the top of the pie with some beaten egg and place in a pre-heated over at 180C for about 40 minutes, or until the puff pastry has browned.

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