chicken pies

I love these individual chicken pies, they are lovely and they look pretty when served with a green salad.  They are suitable for freezing (you take them out as you need them, very convenient) and works amazing for a picnic. Depending on the size of the pies you want to make, you can use normal muffin pans or the giant muffin pans, but I find the normal muffin pan's works perfect.  This recipe makes about 12 in a normal muffin pan and 10 in giant muffin pan.

What you need:
about 50 ml     olive oil
2 pakkets        chicken thighs and drumsticks (8 to 10 pieces)
250g                bacon cut into pieces
1                      onion chopped roughly
250ml              chicken stock
200g                mushrooms chopped finely (optional)
4 sheets           ready rolled puff pastry
salt and pepper to flavour

Preheat your oven at 180°C.

Fry the chicken, onions and bacon in a casserole with the olive oil until brown.

Add the chicken stock and flavor with salt and pepper.

Place the lid on the casserole and put in the oven for about a hour.

Then remove and allow to cool down. When cooled down, remove the meat from the bones.  Break the meat into pieces, and add the chicken pieces and the mushrooms to the sauce.

There should be enough sauce that the meat isn't dry.  If it is too runny, mix a spoon of flour to a bit of water and add to the mixture to thicken the sauce.  Let the chicken cool down completely before you put it into the pan.

Roll out the dough slightly, and cut so that the pieces cover the muffin pans.  It's best you make it slightly bigger than the hole (needs to hang over once you've filled the hole), so that when you put the top on the pie you can push the sides down with a fork.

Dish the chicken mixture in, and paint the dough rind with beaten egg, and close with the dough lid.
Paint the top of the dough with the egg.
If you want to cut out a heart or a star with a cookie cutter you and place it on top of the lid then pain it with egg again.

 Now put into the hot oven @ 200°C for 20-30 minutes until it's golden brown.

This is not the end of your chicken pies, you now need to take them out of the muffin pan, and place it on a baking sheet - be careful that you don't break the dough and bake for a further 5minutes. This will ensure that the dough at the bottom becomes brown and crispy.

Now your chicken pies are ready to eat!

Bon appetit...