This chicken pot pie with a tater tot crust is super easy to make, and is the best comfort food for weeknights or weekends! Midwesterners call this hotdish, we call it chicken tot pie.. 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.
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 Tot Pie
Ok so for this easy chicken tater tot casserole. 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 frozen tater tots on top, bake that ish, done and done.
- We are not arranging mother effing tater tots into concentric circles of food blogging value and self worth. This is not that blog.
- 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.
- This is a chicken tater tot casserole without soup in the ingredient list. I love canned condensed soups, but this casserole is thickened with flour or cornstarch.
Ingredients
For this dish we are using chicken, onion, celery, carrot, butter, flour, heavy cream, frozen peas, and tater tots.
Ingredient Notes/GF Variation
- For a Gluten Free version, use cornstarch whisked with a bit of cold stock instead of flour.
- Use any veggies you like. Any kind of stock you have. Seriously, go to town with swaps here.
- 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. You could even use ground chicken or turkey if you'd like!
Step By Step Instructions
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.
Serving
Fresh herbs or lemon zest or flaky salt for topping? Sure. Did a loaf of bread ever hurt anything? Nope.
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 YES 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.
Enjoy this one! It's a real treat.
Chicken {tater} Tot Pie
Ingredients
- 1 pound chicken cooked/shredded
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ½ onion diced
- 1 medium carrot diced
- 2 ribs celery diced
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups chicken stock
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup frozen peas
- 1 bag frozen seasoned tater tots mine was 19 ounces, more or less is fine
Instructions
- Preheat a large ovenproof skillet to medium heat with the butter. Preheat the oven to 400F.
- Add the carrots, celery, and onion to the skillet with some salt and pepper. Stir for about 5 minutes to soften, then sprinkle the flour over the veggie mixture. Stir to coat the veggies in the flour.
- Slowly stream in the stock, stirring as you go, to incorporate with the floured veggies. Let the mixture come to a boil to thicken.
- Add the cream, peas, and chicken to the chicken pot pie sauce. Taste, and add more salt and pepper to your preference. It should taste really good at this point!
- Scatter the tater tots over the chicken pot pie filling. Sprinkle with salt and pepper if desired. Bake the chicken pot pie with tater tots at 400F for 30 minutes until the top is golden brown.
- Let the chicken pot pie with tater tots rest for about 5 minutes before scooping into bowls and eating. You will likely have no leftovers.
This sounds SO good! Do you think I could use cream of chicken and chicken broth instead of the chicken stock and cream?
It would be a little different but I think it would work! You honestly could skip the flour step because cream of chicken soup is already thickened, then just use enough stock to make a gravy that resembles the inside of a chicken pot pie. If you try it, let us know how it works!
Ooh I just thought that I could instead maybe make a giant hash brown and stick it on top instead of the tots. Then I thought maybe I could just mix oil/shredded potatoes/salt and stick that on top and it would all cook together for maximum laziness. I wonder how that would work....
I don't know! I imagine frozen hash browns would work pretty well, maybe a little more cook time since they aren't already browned like tater tots. Grated potato might work, but wouldn't be exactly like a frozen potato product. Something about the processing makes them work really well with this, for better or for worse. But if you try something else definitely report back, I'd love to know how it goes!