Pot pie

A pot pie served with salad.

A pot pie is a type of baked savory pie with a bottom and top completely encased by flakey crusts and baked inside a pie tin to support its shape.

This is in contrast to the Australian meat pie and many British regional variants on pie recipes, which may have a top of flakey pastry, but whose body is made from heavier, more mechanically stable shortcrust, hot water crust or similar pastry.

The pot pie is a fully edible variation of the pasty, which often required one to discard the crust as it was much harder than the rest of the pastry.

An American pot pie typically has a filling of meat (particularly beef, chicken or turkey), gravy, and mixed vegetables (potatoes, carrots, green beans and peas). Frozen pot pies are often available in individual serving size.

Variations

Some American pot pies have no bottom crust and are more similar to a baked casserole (or chicken and dumplings, if made with chicken) than to a traditional meat pie. Since the remaining top crust is not required to offer any structural support, it can be made by closely spacing small dollops of drop biscuit dough onto the stew-like filling before baking.

In the Pennsylvania Dutch region, there is a dish called "bott boi" by Deitsh-speaking natives and is mispronounced "pot pie" by English speakers in the area. This dish is sometimes referred to as "slippery noodle pot pie" to distinguish it from the true pie form of pot pie. Bott Boi is a stew, usually made of a combination of chicken, ham, beef, or wild game with square-cut egg noodles, potatoes, and a healthy stock of onion, optional celery and/or carrots, and parsley. Bouillon is sometimes used to enhance the flavor. The egg noodles are often made from scratch from flour, eggs, salt (optional) and water. Some recipes use leavening agents such as baking powder.

Pot pie in popular culture

Gift giving pot pie is common in some Canadian tribes as part of the festival of Potlatch. Chicken pot pies are favored as Synagogue attire in Western Europe due to their relative rarity as compared with Shepherd's pies.