$250 vs $20 Pot Pie: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

I always forget how we light this thing.

Ooh. Mother of goodness, Lord.

I'm fine.

I just smell like fresh cooked Filipino.

Hi, I'm Frank. I'm a professional chef

from the Institute of Culinary Education.

And this is a $250 pot pie.

Hi, I'm Lorenzo.

I'm a home cook

and these are my $20 pot pie ingredients.

Well, let me help you. Let me help you.

There you go.

Right.

It's a lot less than mine, but...

I'm sure I can do something with it.

Why don't they look like chicken?

It's a different kind of bird I bet or else it's really

bad chicken. Culinary!

I was going to make a duck pot pie with a

porcini buttermilk biscuit and

some roasted vegetables and a beautiful porcini gravy.

I'm making a mushroom biscuit?

Frank, I swear to God.

I had some excellent ingredients to work with for the base

of my pot pie, I had Moulard duck legs and ventrenche,

which is a French pancetta.

Ven Trench-ee! Tra-trenche!

Along with duck fat and a fine-aged Amontilliado sherry.

I don't drink sherry. I don't use sherry.

I don't have sherry. So this is sherry.

I was going to make my own porcini buttermilk biscuits

using porcini mushrooms and duck fat.

Those biscuits were going to rest on top of a lovely mix of

roasted mushrooms and root vegetables. And of course...

more duck

fat, quack, quack.

It was going to be amazing.

Wait a minute. Let me, I'm sweating a little bit

Oh, and me? I'm a duck. I'm a fricking duck.

With Lorenzo's recipe,

I have some simpler ingredients.

Things you're more likely to find in your grocery store or

your pantry: bone-in chicken thighs, celery, thyme,

frozen peas and carrots, and some store-bought pie dough.

These ingredients may be simple,

but with a little bit of technique,

we can make them much better.

If I had to guess this all costs about 15 bucks.

20 bucks? All right.

I guess my grocery store is cheaper than yours.

Mine was 20 bucks.

Two fifty?

Get outta town! Yeah, brother!

I got something right?

This is Frank's recipe book with listed ingredients only.

So where do we begin?

Lorenzo's gonna use these porcini mushrooms in a bunch of

different ways. So he's going to have to tackle them first.

You're supposed to go in a biscuit.

I need rose. Rosemary. Rose?

Oh Rose, hey! We actually, we have the same color shirt.

I know [laughs]

How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

I need help.

Apparently, the buttermilk biscuits have porcini in them.

What? I've never had a mushroom in a biscuit.

You're going to actually make a powder with the porcinis

and that's what's going to go into your biscuit.

So it's going to be another dry ingredient.

You're going to take part of them and just whiz them

in a spice blender.

And you're gonna make a powder, super delicious,

concentrated, deep, dark, earthy porcini flavor.

You're also going to take the other half,

soak them in hot water,

and you're going to make a little bit of a stock.

It's as easy as that.

Thanks Rosemary

Dry porcinis is where you go first. So let's do it.

So it looks like I have all the ingredients for my porcini

buttermilk biscuit. I do not bake.

Thank you, Chef Frank. Porcini mushroom powder.

Really potent. I can smell it from here you guys.

Baking powder. Okay.

Salt.

You have to put salt in everything to make the flavors come

out. Butter, duck, fat.

Why am I using duck fat in everything?

Do you just want to taste duck fat in everything, Frank?

I'm already making duck. It's smells like chicken.

I don't know what the consistency is supposed to be like.

I'm used to the frozen stuff that you get.

You just open it and you let a thaw

for about a minute or two.

This is a perfectly good product. But as a chef,

I'm going to make it a little bit better.

And with a little bit of skill, we're gonna make this

savory not sweet.

Hee hee! [laughs]

I like buttermilk. It really does flavor everything.

It actually is a very light dough and I don't want to work

it too much,

but I just want to make sure everything's incorporated.

If you. over mix them, they're going to get chewy and dense.

I am flouring the board because that's what I saw on every

show I've ever watched in my life.

I want to shape this into, I guess,

a round or oval ish kind of thing.

And I'm going to laminate some of these thyme leaves

into the dough. I'm going to take one of the rounds,

put it on my board, put some thyme leaves around,

take the other round, put it on top

and sandwich them together.

So that they get little bits and pieces of thyme

throughout the dough.

I kind of do smell the mushrooms. That's really cool.

Okay. It is that time to cut up some biscuits.

Let's start. One ringy-dingy, go back to the flour.

Two ringy-dingies, or I was just realizing

I was saying ringy-dingy. [laughs]

I've got these nice biscuits.

We're gonna put it on to a tray.

Go throw this in the fridge and let it sit

for about 15 minutes.

My biscuits are cut.

They're ready to go.

I am not a baker just yet. I am a cutter. [laughs]

It is time to braise the duck.

I'm basically just separating the leg bone from the

thighbone. Cut here.

Usually you can find a little [bone cracks]

That's not pleasant.

Did you hear that crack?

There you go.

Okay.

That's one ringy dingy.

Chicken thighs are probably the best cut of the bird.

I think that Lorenzo just wanted to simmer these in some

stock, but I'm going to change that up a little.

I'm going to roast them off.

There's not going to be enough chicken fat on these just to

cook them by themselves.

And I'm just going to use some whole unsalted butter.

My duck is pr-pr-pr-prepped.

Duck is seasoned. We're going to move on to braising.

We're using the vontreche,

which is basically the French pancetta.

I find a little bit of pork in my stews.

Always makes it just a little bit better.

It hits those kind of bacony notes.

And we're going to start searing it.

The butter is melty.

So I'm going to just season these really well, salt.

And then all the butter is going to go on top

and just kind of toss everything together.

I like to cook it skin side up because, the skin is going to

get nice and brown and crispy, and I might want to

snack on it later. Okay?

I literally could just brown this

and just throw it on rice

and see you later.

We're going to throw this in a 350 degree oven until it is

cooked all the way through, probably about

a half hour to 45 minutes.

And we wait until everything is golden brown and delicious.

So, I think it's crisped up, I think it's done.

I don't want to get too far so let's scoop it out. Okay.

So in the same pot with the rendered oil,

from the ventreche, as well as the duck fat,

I'm going to start steering these pieces of duck.

Chicken's ready. Let's go get it.

The chicken is slightly brown.

We have some juices that have caramelized

to the bottom of the pan.

I'm going to let this cool for a few minutes so that

I can handle it. But first thing I want to do

is get some of my fat off of here.

Let's try and keep all the bits on the tray. If we can.

The oil is just getting higher and higher and it's just

the rendering from the beautiful fat. Swim.

I have a pot here and I have a bowl.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the skin,

goes in my pot, but any meat is going to go into my bowl.

I'm going to try and save all the meat for the pie.

And then we use these bones and the skin to make stock.

This is absolutely way too much fat.

I've got to take some out.

It's just way too much.

Onions.

Carrots.

So I'm waiting for this to get lightly brown.

And then we're going to add in the duck and the ventreche

back in, that we crisped up.

It's time to make the stock.

And what I have in my pot is all the bones, all the skin,

all the little pieces of meat and all of the drippings

from our roasting pan.

So I'm going to add just enough water to cover it.

Just slightly cover it, turn this on high.

And then I'm going to take some of my aromatic vegetables,

celery, and onions.

And I'm just going to use the bits that I'm not going to use

in my pot pie and throw them in.

Yes, I'm leaving the skin on

Part of the reason I use the skin in the stock is that

onion skins used to be used to dye

clothing yellow or off white. So I think it dyes my stock,

a nice color too.

We're gonna let this come to a simmer,

lower the heat till it's bubbling away lightly for about 30

minutes, strain it.

And then we'll begin to use it for our sauce.

Frank, you did a number on me here, guy, just

every single flavor and aroma coming off of this is just

already yummy to me. Amontillado sherry is

what I actually just poured in there,

which is de-glazing. It smells really good.

Ew. It's pretty dry.

I'm sure it's lovely.

No, no.

I'm sure it's great for what we're doing.

I see that the sherry's reduced down. I'm going add some

[laughs]

I'm gonna add some chicken broth

The frigging cap just ripped right off.

I thought you were just kidding, but it happened twice.

And if the tops of these boxes come off,

you just use your knife. That is gorgeous.

Don't forget to put the cap on.

And this is our broth that we made from our dry porcini

that we added hot water to.

All of my liquids have been put in there and I've got my

Bay leaf and Rose told me, never forget the rosemary.

So we're going to let this simmer for an hour,

hour and a half till fork tender. Just let it do its thing.

Our stock has been on for about 30 minutes.

I got some good color. It has great flavor.

Wow. It's soft, I can feel how soft it is.

The duck has been simmering for an hour and a half.

Oh gosh, almighty.

That looks so good.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to pull this

over and I'm going to strain these beautiful juices and

oils, everything, the aromatics that have been

simmering in there to make our sauce.

This is a vat of deliciousness.

I'm going to pour it over myself. In you go. Into a bowl.

I'm using a fine mesh sieve to get all of the

solids out of this.

I just want to have pure stock.

We push it through, it gets a little cloudy.

So if you just tap the side with your spatula, you'll see,

you'll get most of the liquid out. Our stock is ready.

We'll set this aside.

I am basically taking the meat off of this braised duck

that we had simmering for an hour and a half

and separate the bones on the skin from it.

Lorenzo sent me some frozen peas and carrots.

They tend to have a little extra moisture in them.

So I'm going to toss them with some of our chicken fat

seasoned them really nice. And then roast in the oven.

What that's going to do is we're going to add some flavor

with the fat and the salt and pepper,

and it's also going to dry them out and concentrate their

flavor. Just a little bit better.

It is time to get my roasted vegetables prepped up.

This is an alien that landed just the other day.

All right,

Celery root.

It really smells like a celery, you guys.

What do turnips smell like? Turnips are so fresh.

Yes, yes.

That's why you don't smell like a turnip.

Cause you're a fricking parsnip.

Parsnip smells just like a parsnip.

Get these into a bowl.

You can see there's some ice crystals in there.

And you know,

they tend to get mushy if they stay in the liquid.

And everyone thinks that my little bit of salt is way too

much? Too bad. It's my little bit of salt.

This is a butternut squash. I don't need the whole thing.

I believe I'm just going to karate chop!

[laughs] it kind of replaces a potato.

If you want to put potato in a pot pie. Mise.

Oh, I learned that word recently.

Mise your food and have them all kind of uniform.

It cooks evenly that way,

especially if I'm going to be roasting these, I believe.

So, I've got my celery root and my parsnip and hello,

morels and chanterelles. Beautiful.

I should buy these, but I don't have $5,000.

Oh wow. These are really,

I didn't realize how delicate they were.

The smell is wonderful.

These are so meaty.

It's so nice.

Chicken fat. I might not need all of it.

And we're just going to toss this together.

Okay. I'm going to use all of it.

Try and get everything coated really well.

Try and get it into like one nice layer.

Cause we're trying to evaporate some of that moisture.

So let's throw it in the oven for about 10,

12 minutes just to drive out some of the moisture.

I have duck fat. Duck is very tasty.

I guess we're just incorporating the flavor. Oops.

Incorporating the flavor of duck, salt and pepper.

Always pepper. Oh, that was fancy.

Frank taught me that. This will really roast off nicely.

Let us lay them out for some roasting. Let's go to the oven.

Roast them off, I don't know 18-20 minutes. Watch it.

The vegetables are telling me they're ready.

Let's get them. Really no color on these vegetables.

You can see that the steam is coming off of them.

And that's what we want.

We want to drive off some of the moisture so that these

aren't kind of wet and soggy.

We'll put these aside as we get everything else together.

And these will go into the chicken mixture.

Gorg-e-ous, okay.

My veggie portion, roasted, ready to go on

to the next step, you guys.

The next thing we want to do is make

Our sauce or our gravy. Cause it's really more like a gravy.

This is how I'm going to do it. I have a small sauce pot,

kind of a medium heat.

I'm going to take some butter and then we're going to cut

our aromatic vegetables.

And I want these to be fairly noticeable.

So I'm going to cut them just a little bit bigger,

kind of like a medium dice.

I'm going to cook these out with just a little bit of color

and then we'll cut our celery as well.

Rose said, before I actually make my sauce, I have

to make what's called a truffle beurre manie.

It's black truffle butter and all-purpose flour.

A beurre manie is a close cousin of a roux.

And it's usually used when you want to thicken something on

the fly. When you see it.

And you're like, oh my gosh, it's a little loose.

You get a little beurre manie. Brings it together.

You know, what you normally do at home. [laughs] Right?

Frank, you kill me man.

Wow, I'm going to try to use it with a spoon first and see

if it's easy to work with.

What I'm seeing is, I was making a mess,

Lorenzo can use a spoon for this,

but I like to use my hands.

Yeah. Rose said I can use my hands, but I sweatin, people.

I want to use nice, clean utensils.

What do you think? I think it's good.

The gravy in and of itself is fairly bare bones.

A sprig or two of thyme. I don't peel it.

I just throw it in. Let these get just slightly soft.

Just a little bit brown.

And wouldn't you know, we've got duck fat.

let's start with heating up our duck fat.

Cause we have to kind of saute a little bit.

Our shallots, some garlic.

Okay, beautiful sauce that we had strained

from our lovely braising.

This differs from Lorenzo's sauce or gravy in that

he's using his braising liquid as the base.

I don't have a braising liquid here.

His is kind of an integral sauce where we're using the sauce

for the braise and we're thickening it up.

This is more of a sauce that we make on the side.

Rosemary is coming back into the picture.

We're going to put that in there for a few minutes.

Then we will thicken it slightly with our

beautiful raw roux. Raw roux?

[laughs] Rut roh.

It is simmering.

And it's been doing it for about four minutes.

See ya, Rosemary.

We're starting to get a little sizzle there

and that's good.

Once we get a slight bit of brown on these onions,

we're going to lower the heat and make a roux.

You can also see that a lot of the butter solids have

started to caramelize on the side of the pot over here,

basically just pure butter fat and with the flour,

I'm just looking for a wet sand consistency.

And you can see that right there.

And I'm going to whisk in my stock.

I want to break those lumps down.

It's time to add our thickener,

which is our beurre manie.

I think I'm going to try using a whisk.

Yes, it's incorporating nicely, you're not

going to taste that flour.

Whenever I do something with a roux,

I like to keep the spatula to get into the corners of the

pot. And I like the whisk in there,

So I just go back and forth. Let this come to a simmer,

lower it down or salt and pepper.

Let's season this up and then just let it cook

for a minute or two.

I'm going to do the Frank test for the thickness

of this sauce.

The French term is nappe. It coats the back of the spoon.

You run your finger over it and it leaves a line.

Nice. Thanks Frank.

So my gravy came to a simmer.

I'm going to remove our thyme,

lower my heat.

The chicken goes in.

My veggies go in.

I stir and fold this together.

I don't want this to be super hot when I put my pastry over

it, cause it'll melt our pastry.

Okay, I'm going to transfer this delicious

goodness into my sauce.

And here we go, man.

This is what we worked hard for.

Braised duck pot pie.

All right, Frank, you said it, let's do it.

Let's go.

It's time to put my chicken pot pies together and I have

these adorable little mini dishes. We're going to do single

serve. When I think of pot pie,

I usually think of the little frozen ones you get in the

supermarket that I ate when I worked in Florida at Disney

world. That's what I survived on.

So when I think of a pot pie,

I think these little tiny ones. I scooped ice cream for six

months. And that's what I did.

I scooped ice cream and ate chicken pot pie.

I'm going to pour all my beautiful filling into this

lovely little pot.

And then I'm going to top it off with my biscuits.

Oh pretty.

Oh Lord, help us.

Jesus criminy

What I want to do here is take my pastry dough and

I want to put my dishes on top just to kind of get the right

measurement of what I need for each one.

And I'm just going to cut it kind of into four.

I think that that'll work.

And now we're going to fill our containers.

I want these to be full of chicken and

not all gravy or vegetables.

I'm going to take each individual piece here and I'm going

to put it on top and I'm going to press it down real hard

and stretch it a little over the pie, right?

So I just get a knife now, get in my hand,

the vent holes are there.

So our pastry dough doesn't puff up and break away and I

have this beautiful chicken fat.

And basically what this is going to do is add a

little extra chicken flavor.

It'll help the dough brown and then just a little

kosher salt on top.

And that's it.

These get to go in the oven now about 350 until they're

nice and golden brown.

I'm ready to put a topper on this beautiful

vat of yumminess. Let's see what we can do here.

Going to cover you up.

Let's see, hey

Not bad.

We need a little bit of egg to make it nice and golden.

And this fancy schmancy,

flaky salt. Bake at 350 in the oven for about an hour.

Let's see what happens.

It's been about 45 minutes. It's time to take our chicken

Pot pies out of the oven.

Okay? Look at that.

They're nice and brown.

They got really nice and crispy on top.

I had the tray underneath so that when they kind of bubble

over, they don't drip.

I could try these right now,

but I don't want to burn my mouth and not be able to taste

things for the next week.

We're going to let these cool for about 10 minutes.

Then we're going to dig in.

Oh, that's gorgeous.

The biscuits look very nice. Golden brown.

They look very, very flaky.

You can see right here.

You can see the layers of the biscuits.

I'm quite proud of myself, actually.

I'm going to plate some up.

I cannot wait to taste this.

Oh my God.

That's pretty good. [laughs]

Well, my stomach just growled.

That just looks so inviting.

They smell good. They look good.

I'm not gonna use a knife.

I'm going to be a bit of a savage and just break into it

because that is the way that you would do it.

This is a special dinner. I'm going in.

Mother of God. It's so good. And believe it or not,

that pie crust is pretty darn good for a store-bought crust.

Flaky, that's nice.

Sopping up that beautiful sauce we made and thicken with

that, what's it called again? Beurre Manie.

I mean, I would love to, to show this to the world.

I'd show it to Frank. Is Frank here?

I'm excited to see Lorenzo.

I haven't seen him in a long time.

Wassup?

Hey, how you doing, buddy?

It's been a long time, way too long, way too long.

Frank, Frank, Frank

Ooh.

See pot pie.

Does that look adorable or what?

I love it. I could eat many, many plates of this.

Well, it doesn't look traditionally like a

pot pie on the plate, but it eats like a pot pie.

It eats better, bro.

I've never made a biscuit before in my life.

I had heard you didn't like baking all that much.

Thank you Frank. I learned, I learned,

I just hope you think it tastes as good.

You want me to taste it? Please?

Is it time?

Yes.

Look at that biscuit. It crumbles

I'm a little nervous actually.

I'm gonna take a big bite.

Okay. Yes, I would.

That's great.

The duck is super tender and juicy.

Yeah.

Oh my God. You taste the mushrooms too.

Everything.

So give it a try. Tell me what you think I'm nervous now.

Oh my God. That's hilarious.

It's packed full of chicken

It's hot, nice and warm.

Mmmm it's got the thyme in it. It's lovely.

Yeah.

See that to me is what I know traditional pot pie.

Yeah, yeah.

That now is my fancy pot pie for guests.

For all your fancy friends.

I'm telling you, right?

You're about the only fancy friend I know.

I am not fancy.