Chicken {tater} Tot Pie

This chicken pot pie variation is made with a tater tot crust, is super easy to make, and is the best comfort food for weeknights or weekends! Midwesterners call this hotdish, any creamy dreamy casserole filling + a tater tot crust. The filling can be made in advance for meal prep and frozen tater tots take all the guesswork out of making your own pie crust for chicken pot pie.

Oh oh  oh oh HELL YES.

I am so excited for you to eat this.

It needs not a ton of introduction other than, hello, we are in a pandemic and there is just SOMETHING about this low level of anxiety that is making me really crave familiar flavors. Spaghetti, quiche, tacos, and chicken pot pie. They've all been on really regular rotation for the last three weeks, and I'm not mad about it.

Some people are trying new things, but that's just not how my brain is reacting to this time in history. Give me nostalgia, give me familiarity, give me recipes that WORK and don't make me second guess everything about myself and my life because, yes, that is how I emotionally react these days when cooking doesn't go well.

Chicken Pot Pie With Tater Tots

Ok so for this. We make a pared down, super simple chicken pot pie filling, in my favorite Staub because this is a one pot situation. Then, we throw some tots on top, bake that ish, done and done.

1. We are not arranging mother effing tater tots into concentric circles of food blogging value and self worth. This is not that blog.
2. If you don't have a big stove-to-oven dish, no worries! Make the filling in a pot, transfer it to a baking dish, toss on tots, move on with your life. We are good people.

Now, I boiled chicken in stock, then shredded it and used that same stock for the chicken pot pie gravy. This is also a great use for leftover chicken, rotisserie chicken, or any cooked chicken you can get your hands on. Hell, use ground chicken or turkey if you're into that!

Besides the chicken, we're using onion, celery, carrot, butter, flour, heavy cream, frozen peas, and tater tots.

Again, swaps: use cornstarch whisked with a bit of cold stock instead of flour for a GF version. Any veggies you like. Any kind of stock you have. Seriously go to town with swaps here.

Start by heating a large skillet to medium heat with some butter. Preheat the oven to 400F.

Add the carrots, onions, and celery with some salt and pepper and saute the veggies for 5 minutes or so, stirring as you go, until they're soft.

Sprinkle the flour over the veggies (skip this step if you're using cornstarch for GF), and stir to coat the veggies in the flour. Then, slowly pour in the stock with one hand while stirring with the other, incorporating the stock slowly as you go.

Let the mixture come to a bubble, then add the cream, shredded chicken, and peas to the mixture. Stir everything to coat and taste: add salt and pepper until the entire dish tastes GOOD.

Let the pot pie filling mixture simmer for 5 minutes or so, just to marry the flavors and thicken the sauce. Then, remove from the heat and dump the tater tots all over the dish.

I sprinkled the tots with pepper for a teensy bit of heat, but if that feels like overkill to you, skip it!

Bake. Half an hour. Clean the kitchen during this time so that when you're done eating you're DONE, you know? If you want to.

I mean.

Fresh herbs or lemon zest or flaky salt for topping? Sure. The baking time gives the filling a chance to reduce a bit more and really thicken, the tots are soft on the bottom and crispy on the top, and just UGH this is the hug we need right now.

This is definitely whole-family food, if your kids can deal with their foods being mixed. Beck adored it, mainly because she just figured out that tater tots are like hash browns which are like french fries, so all good on that front.

And there we have zero fuss chicken pot pie with tater tot crust. And, sure, yes, it's perfectly emotional for this time in our lives, but this is going on our regular menu rotation for all the time.

Enjoy!

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