For Chicken Pot Pie That's Extra Rich And Creamy, Use This Italian Staple

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Chicken pot pie is rustic, homey, and markedly decadent all at once. The bird's almost an afterthought, with chunks suspended in a thick white sauce all tucked beneath a golden crust. It's actually hard to imagine that interior being any more robust. But swapping an ordinary chicken pot pie's flour-based roux filling for a butter-, cream-, and Parmesan-packed Alfredo sauce sends it careening into need-a-nap territory. And you can do so easily by simmering the cooked chicken and veggies in your favorite scratch-made or store-bought Alfredo on the stovetop before baking under your choice of pastry.

Alfredo sauce is also perfect for chicken pot pie in part because it brings together many of the ingredients in the famed pasta preparation, chicken Alfredo. In a pot pie, the Alfredo meets veggies and a different kind of carb crown for one wallop of a meal. Just like with roux, you can also make Alfredo sauce using just a few ingredients. And its extra little cheesy oomph might even inspire more filling ideas to partner with or even replace some of your existing faves like the standard peas and carrots. Anything you've ever enjoyed in a pot pie or under a blanket of Alfredo will work, with plenty of room to mix and match, too.

Chicken Alfredo, with or without the implied fettuccine, is nothing if not a heavier dish. That's why you usually see it paired with things like broccoli rather than, say, the potatoes that are more likely to populate a pot pie. So, while you might want to skip the spuds in a more substantial chicken Alfredo pot pie, you can still squeeze in equally well-suited veggies like broccoli or cauliflower, which will add heartiness if you still want something closer to the tuber's texture, just a little less dense. Either will work just as nicely with or without your other usual additions, as long as everything fits inside. However, you may need to reduce the amount of other vegetables like peas and carrots that you'd typically use to make room.

You can also lean deeper into Alfredo's Italian-American associations. A hearty dose of garlic is an obvious addition in that case. You could give your chicken Alfredo pot pie a bit of the Marsala treatment with some wine-sauteed mushrooms. Eggplant likewise evokes classic red-sauce cooking, along with the verdant pop of fresh basil and a sprinkling of red pepper flakes for a hot kick.

Beyond the fillings, you can tailor the dish to your palate by switching up your Alfredo base. You could add a bit of porcine richness with something like Rao's Homemade Bacon Alfredo or accentuate the dish's earthiness with Carbone's Black Truffle Alfredo. There are few wrong moves when whipping up Alfredo-enriched chicken pot pie.