White Bean Pot Pie with Olive Oil Pastry
This pot pie has everything I want in a comfort meal: the filling is rich and creamy from white beans. The savoury crust uses olive oil to create an intensely rich flavour and flakiness. It is now my favourite pot pie of all the pot pies (sorry, tourtiere). I’d like to explore this with different beans and bean cooking methods, I think most beans would work.
Pie Filling
Ingredients
500g | 2 cups cooked beans or 2 @ 14oz cans, drained and rinsed
375ml | 1-1/2 cups bean broth (or water, or vegetable stock – don’t use the liquid from a can of beans, it’s usually very salty!)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 sticks of celery, diced
2 medium / 1 large carrot, diced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
100g chopped Tuscan kale (1 bunch, 150g with the stems) – swap with 1 cup of frozen peas if you don’t like kale
60ml | 1/4 cup olive oil
60g | 1/2 cup flour
1 tbsp dried thyme
1–2 tsp of lemon juice or sherry vinegar, to taste
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil pie crust
Ingredients
Makes one double pie crust:
340g flour (plus more for dusting)
20g sugar
5g salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
145g olive oil
90g water
Make the pie filling
Heat large (4.5 quart or larger) pot or dutch oven on medium-high. Add the olive oil, onion, celery, carrots, and a pinch of salt. Stir, then add 60ml | 1/4 cup of water, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. This will rapidly soften the vegetables.
Remove the lid and continue cooking for about 20 minutes until the carrots reach your desired softness – they won’t get any softer later.
Add in the garlic and cook for 1 minute until fragrant.
Add the chopped kale and cook until its wilted and much smaller, around 2 minutes.
Add the thyme, salt and pepper and stir.
Add the flour and stir everything together, cooking for about 1 minute, until the flour evenly coats the vegetables without clumps.
Add the bean broth or stock and bring the mixture to a boil so the flour thickens. You want to see the bottom of the pot when you run your spoon through the mixture, but it will slowly come back together.
Remove from the heat, add in the beans, taste and just seasoning. Add the lemon juice or vinegar if acid is needed. Allow to cool fully before assembling pot pie.
Note: If you don’t want to proceed with the double-pie crust, you can put all of the filling in a 9x9 baking dish, cover with puff pastry from the store, or biscuit dough, or garlic bread croutons, or cheese, and bake at 350 until bubbling and brown on top.
See alternate directions at the end of the recipe.
Make the pie crust
This is a very weird dough but it makes a very flakey crust. Please just trust me on how weird and counterintuitive it feels.
Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Pour the olive oil in and stir with a spoon. You’ll have a dough that looks wet and crumbly. You’re going to think it has enough liquid. I would like to remind you that olive oil is 100% fat, which prevents the formation of gluten, and it is not wet, it is greasy.
Add in the water. Stir with a spoon (it will be sticky) until it comes together then switch to your hands and knead it. You don’t need to worry about developing gluten since the flour is coated in flat. The texture will look weird, like it’s shredding apart.
Divide in two, wrap in unbleached parchment paper and set in the fridge for 1 hour to allow the dough to hydrate. Some oil will separate. Accept it.
Generously flour the counter, you’ll need more than you think so have it on hand. Working with one piece of dough at a time, flatten out the dough with your hands. Use a bench scraper or knife to cut the dough into 4 pieces. Toss them in flour then stack them on top of each other and smush the dough down to be flat. This layering helps create “breaks” in the dough, a technique like inverted puff pastry, which helps make this very flakey.
Roll out between two sheets of parchment. It’s nearly impossible to roll this out nicely without parchment. Roll to 1/8" thick. Repeat with the other crust.
Assemble Pies
I used recyclable 9” aluminum pie plates for my pies.
Drape one rolled out crust on the pie plate. Lift and tuck so the crust sits flat within the pie plate. Leave at least 1/2” overhang around on all sides.
Fill the crust with the cooled filling so it has a slight mound in the center.
Dip a finger in water and then tap around the border of the crust to wet it so the top crust will stick better.
Drape the second pie crust on the first, ensuring it hangs over the edge of the pie. Cut a slit in the center, which will allow steam to escape during baking and make it easier to form a tight crust. Using your hand, follow around the mound made in the filling to press any air out from under the crust. The filling will not settle.
Pinch the top and bottom crusts together on the overhang, thinning it out.
Using kitchen shears, trim the crust along the outside edge so there is a uniform 1/2" overhang. Fold the overhanging crust under the top crust, which gives you a nice finished edge. You can crimp the crust with a fork or decoratively ruffle the edge.
Freeze the pie for at least 30 minutes, up to 6 months. For long-term storage top with a piece of parchment to prevent freezer burn and store in a pizza box in the freezer. Makes a great gift.
Bake from frozen
Bake directly from frozen.
Pre-heat oven to 425°F.
Beat one egg and use it to brush the top of the frozen pie, if serving to vegans brush with almond (or other) milk.. Place the pie in the oven.
Bake for 20 minutes, then lower the oven to 325°F, and bake for another 65-75 minutes until the filling is bubbling and the crust has a deep golden brown. If using a thermometer, look for an internal temperature of 165°F.
Allow to cool for 20 minutes before serving for the filling to settle, it will thicken as it cools.
Alternative preparations
For a faster weeknight meal, make the filling as above but with canned beans. Place in a 9x9 casserole dish and top with store-bought puff pastry. Brush with egg wash. Bake at 425°F for 20 minutes until the puff pastry is golden brown.
You can also top with regular pie crust, biscuit dough, garlic bread croutons, or cheese!