Chicken Pot Pie - avg 3lb

This is our best-selling frozen chicken pot pie, and once you cut into it you'll see why. My crew and I don't take shortcuts on the filling — we simmer it ourselves in cream and vermouth instead of relying on a bouillon cube for flavor.

We simmer boneless chicken breast in heavy cream, water, and dry vermouth, then build in peas, carrots, onion, and celery along with fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, a bay leaf, and ground black pepper. That mixture gets wrapped in my flaky, all-butter pie crust — butter and only butter, never shortening — and the whole thing is made by hand at our small bakery in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

This pie arrives unbaked and fully frozen. Preheat your oven, put it in from frozen, and bake it fresh at home — if you can bake a frozen pizza, you can bake this pie. It's built to feed a family for a weeknight dinner or hold its own on a holiday table next to dishes that took a lot longer to make.

Keep it frozen until you're ready to bake. This pie is not vegetarian and is not gluten-free — the crust is a wheat-flour, all-butter dough, and the filling includes dairy in the form of butter, heavy cream, and milk. With a wheat-flour crust, a touch of sugar, and starch-thickened filling, this pie isn't suited for keto, paleo, or carnivore diets — it's a classic, from-scratch comfort food made for those who eat that way.

Ingredients: Chicken Breast (Boneless, Skinless With Rib Meat, Chicken Broth, Salt, Natural Flavorings), Water, Unsalted Butter (Pasteurized Cream, Natural Flavoring), Onion, Carrots, Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Heavy Cream (Cream, Gellan Gum), Dry Vermouth, Celery, Peas, Sugar, Instant Clearjel (Modified Food Starch), Himalayan Sea Salt, Milk (Milk, Vitamin D3), Fresh Rosemary, Fresh Thyme, Bay Leaf, and Ground Black Pepper.

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Common Questions

How does this compare to a conventional grocery-store chicken pot pie?
The biggest differences show up in the crust and the broth base. A conventional frozen pot pie typically uses a shortening-based crust and a filling thickened with canned broth, bouillon, or pre-made cream-of-chicken soup concentrate. This pie's crust is 100% butter with no shortening at all, and the filling starts with chicken breast simmered in heavy cream, water, and dry vermouth rather than canned stock. You'll also notice the vegetable pieces are whole-cut carrots, celery, onion, and peas rather than diced filler vegetables, and the seasoning comes from fresh rosemary, thyme, and bay leaf instead of dried spice blends.

Why does an all-butter crust matter, and what's the actual mechanism?
Butter is about 15-18% water, and when that water hits oven heat it turns to steam and pushes apart the layers of dough as it bakes, which is what creates a flaky, laminated texture. Shortening is nearly 100% fat with no water content, so it produces a softer, more uniform crumb but it can't generate that same steam-driven flakiness. Butter also melts at a lower temperature than shortening, so the crust needs to go into the oven cold and bake from frozen — which is exactly how this pie is designed to be handled. The tradeoff bakeries make when they switch to shortening is usually about shelf stability and cost, not flavor or texture.

Does this fit a keto, paleo, or carnivore diet?
Not as-is. The crust is made with bleached wheat flour, so it carries the bulk of the carbohydrate load in the pie and rules it out for strict keto, paleo, or carnivore eating. The filling itself is closer to paleo-friendly — it's built from chicken, cream, butter, and whole vegetables rather than gums, syrups, or artificial thickeners, aside from the small amount of sugar and Instant Clearjel (modified food starch) used to set the sauce. If you're following a lower-carb protocol, some customers scoop out the filling and skip the top and bottom crust, since the filling alone is much closer to a cream-based chicken stew.

Can I use this filling as a base for other recipes?
Yes — the filling on its own works well as a shortcut base for chicken and biscuits, a shepherd's-pie-style bake topped with mashed potatoes instead of a pastry crust, or a heartier chicken stew if you thin it with a little extra broth or cream. Because the sauce is built with heavy cream and dry vermouth rather than a canned soup base, it holds up fine to reheating and doesn't break or separate the way starch-thickened gravies sometimes do. If you're adapting it into a different dish, just account for the Instant Clearjel already in the mix — it will continue to thicken slightly as it cools, so add liquid gradually rather than all at once.

What do the claims about scratch-made fillings and butter crust actually mean?
These are direct statements from Ben and his crew about how the pie is made, not third-party certifications — there's no USDA organic seal, gluten-free certification, or allergen-free certification attached to this product. What we can verify is what's on the ingredient label: the crust uses unsalted butter with no shortening listed anywhere in the ingredients, and the filling is built from chicken breast, heavy cream, dry vermouth, and fresh herbs rather than pre-made broth concentrates or soup bases. The pie is made by hand at the bakery in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, by Ben's small crew of bakers, and the full ingredient list is provided so you can check exactly what's going into it.

What allergens does this pie contain?
Based on the ingredient label, this pie contains wheat and milk. The crust uses bleached wheat flour and malted barley flour, and the filling includes butter, heavy cream, and milk. There's no third-party allergen certification on this product, so if you have a severe allergy, review the full ingredient list rather than relying on the description alone.