Nothing beats a warm, comforting pie on a cold, dark evening and these chicken pot pies are just the ticket to keep you feeling cosy.

The secret to a great tasting chicken pie in my opinion is to roast your chicken first, in order to create soft, perfectly cooked chicken and secondly to get savoury chicken ‘goodness’ from roasting (the brown sticky bits that remain at the end of roasting chicken). I have previously made a roux based sauce for my pies, which is tasty, but this is a little lighter and has a more intense flavour, as I thicken it with cornflour, meaning you don’t have a heavy, flour based sauced packed with butter.

I used a whole roast chicken in this recipe, I will use the leftovers for lunches in the week, but you can roast chicken thighs, drumsticks, breasts; whatever you have available.

Recipe (makes 2 pot pies)

1 whole chicken (you will only need half for this once cooked, but I like to use a mix of thigh and breast meat) or 2 thighs/2 breasts etc.

1 tbsp olive oil

The reserved meat juices from roasting your chicken

A knob of butter 

1 onion

2 large portobello mushrooms or 6 brown chestnut mushrooms, chopped into chunks

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 glass of dry white wine ( you can drink the rest)

150ml milk

1 tsp Dijon mustard

50g Smoked Applewood cheese, grated

1 tbsp cornflour mixed with 1 tbsp cold water

Plenty of salt and pepper

1 pack ready rolled, all butter puff pasty

1 egg, beaten

• Pre-hear your oven to 180^oC
• Place your chicken into a roasting tin and drizzle with the olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for around 1 hour 10 minutes if using a whole chicken or 30-35 minutes if using pieces. Use a meat thermometer to check it’s cooked, or even, not over cooked.
• Once cooked, remove from the oven and place the chicken onto a plate and leave to cool (this will make it easier to remove the meat from the bones). Pour the meat juices from the tin into a bowl and set aside.
• Next, heat up a sauce pan and add the butter. Once melted, add the onion and season well. Cook until soft and brown. Add in the garlic and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add some olive oil if the onion dries out.
• Add in the chopped mushrooms and cook until soft. Add in the white wine and chicken juices and let bubble for 2 minutes. Add in the mustard, milk, cheese, salt and pepper and cook for a further 2 minutes until everything is combined and the cheese has melted into the sauce.
• Stir in the cornflour mix and stir until thickened and bubbling. Turn off the heat and leave while you prep the chicken.
• Take the chicken off the bones and cut/rip into chunks, then add this to the sauce.
• Separate the mix into two ceramic baking/pie dishes and leave to cool in the fridge until needed
• Roll out your pastry and cut to the size of your dishes. With a pastry brush, egg wash the edges of your pots and place the pastry on top of the dish, crimping at the edges to seal. Egg wash the top of the pastry and season with salt and pepper.
• Bake for 30-40 minutes until risen, brown and crispy

*you can add other veggies to the mix, like carrots, celery and leeks, just cook this at the start with the onion.