Moravian Chicken Pie

This is a local favorite from the Piedmont of North Carolina. Though many recipes these days use all white meat, older recipes call for white and dark meat. To cook the chicken and make the broth, cooks typically simmer a whole chicken in water until it is almost falling off the bone. The broth is strained and simmered some more as needed to concentrate the flavor. The chicken skin and bones are discarded and the meat finely chopped.

• Ready In: 3 hrs
• Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• Pie Crust

• 2  cups all-purpose flour
• 1  teaspoon salt
• 3⁄4 cup shortening
• 6 -8  tablespoons cold water

• Filling

• 2 1⁄2 cups  chopped  cooked chicken
• 1  teaspoon salt
• 1  teaspoon ground pepper
• 3  tablespoons flour
• 1  cup chicken broth
• 1 -2  tablespoon butter, cut in pieces (optional)

• Crumb Topping

• 1⁄4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1  tablespoon butter

Directions

1. For Pie Crust, combine flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Stir in water just until dough forms. Divide dough into two equal pieces. Cover and chill 30 minutes, or until ready to use.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out one piece of dough to cover bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie plate and place in the plate. Roll out second piece of dough for top crust and set aside.
3. Place chicken on bottom crust in pie plate. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and flour, and pour in broth. Dot with butter, if desired. Cover with top crust, moisten edges with a little flour and crimp to seal.
4. For Crumb Topping, rub butter into flour until mixture resembles bread crumbs. Sprinkle over top crust of pie. Cut a few slits in top crust to allow steam to escape. (Unbaked pies may be frozen at this point.)
5. Place pie plate on a cookie sheet for easier handling and better browning of the bottom crust. Bake pie 45 minutes to 1 hour, until golden brown and bubbly. (If pie is frozen, bake at 400 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.) If desired, stir a mixture of flour and water into any extra chicken broth, plus salt and pepper to taste, and simmer until thickened to make a gravy to serve with the pie.
6. Makes one 9-inch pie.
7. Note: Many Moravians make chicken pies with a 10-inch pie plate. To adapt this recipe for a 10-inch pie plate, increase the filling ingredients to 3 cups chopped chicken, 1/4 cup flour and 1 1/4 cups chicken broth, but use the same amounts of all the other ingredients.