Japanese Curry Pot Pie with Miso-Cheddar Biscuits

Consider the pot pie. The filling is basically a stew with meat (often chicken) and vegetables (peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, etc.) in a thick, flour-thickened gravy. It’s warm, thick, and comforting.

Consider Japanese curry. It’s basically a stew with meat (often chicken) and vegetables (peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, etc.) in a thick, flour-thickened gravy. It’s warm, thick, and comforting.

See where I’m going with this?

Pot Pie, Not Pie?

The basic idea here is to use Japanese curry as the filling for a chicken pot pie, modifying the biscuit topping with a few new ingredients to play well the curry and give them a vaguely Japanese twist.

“But wait,” you cry, “chicken pot pie is made with pie crust!” Well, yes, it usually is, but biscuits are also an option, and one with several advantages over the more common pie crust. First, it’s much faster to make this dish with a biscuit topping–you can stir together the dough in a couple minutes, scoop it directly onto your hot filling, and put it in the oven to bake. Compare that with a pie crust-based recipe. In order for a pie crust to bake properly, it needs to go cold into the oven so the butter in the dough can puff the crust rather than melt out. This means making the dough in advance as well as the filling, since that also needs to be cold to help the crust bake. All together, this moves the dish squarely into weekend-project territory, whereas the biscuit version can be on your table in an hour and a half.

Biscuit dough also lends itself well to adaptation, with experimentation as easy as stirring in different flavors¹, something that can’t be said about pie dough. For this recipe, we start with a basic buttermilk drop biscuit dough, but mash miso paste into the buttermilk for a savory undertone, and stir in scallions and cheddar cheese (believe it or not, a fairly common addition to Japanese curry).

Curry Up

For the filling of our pot pie we’re using a pretty standard Japanese curry. If you’re unfamiliar, Japanese curry is nothing like other curries you’d find elsewhere. It’s only mildly spicy, instead leaning savory and sweet. like many other Japanese dishes. Originally introduced by the British (hence the curry powder-based flavor profile), it’s in a lot of ways like a Western stew–meat, potatoes, and vegetables simmered in stock thickened with roux–with some curry powder added. It’s extremely popular in Japan, and ready-made blocks of roux and seasoning make it a quick and easy dish to prepare, something we’re taking advantage of here.

To make the curry, start by browning some chicken thighs. We’re using dark meat here since it stands up better to the two-part cooking process, but white meat would still be fine if that’s what you have. Once the meat is browned, take it out and saute onions and ginger, then add potatoes and carrots, along with half a grated apple, which gives some sweet fruit notes to the dish, along with a bit of acidity if you use something like a Granny Smith. You could also chop the apple if you want some more distinct bits of sweetness, or if you’re using a softer variety that’ll dissolve into the sauce on its own.

Once the vegetables are beginning to soften slightly, add back the meat and add some chicken stock along with a bit of dashi powder. Dashi powder gives a bit of extra savoriness to the dish as well as a vaguely Japanese essence, but not to such an extent that you’ll be able to pick it out. If you don’t have any one hand, it’s fine to leave it out; you just might need an extra pinch of salt. Once the liquid is simmering, stir in the curry roux blocks. You want to be thorough when you do this; biting into a bit of undissolved roux is not something I’d recommend. To incorporate it easily, you can use a ladle to scoop out some liquid and drop in a square or two of roux. Stir the liquid in the ladle until the roux dissolves, then stir it back into the rest of the liquid and repeat with the remaining roux. Once all the roux is added, return the skillet to a simmer, stir in some frozen peas, and remove from the heat.

To finish, scoop roughly 2-tablespoon blobs of biscuit dough around the surface of the curry, set the pan on top of a tray to catch the inevitable drips from the bubbling curry, and bake until the biscuits are brown on top and the whole dish is bubbling hot. Once it’s done baking, be sure to let it cool for at least 15 minutes before serving–before then, not only will you burn your mouth, but the biscuits might be wet and unset where they touch the liquid. Once it’s rested, though, prepare yourself for the greatest way to enjoy Japanese curry since white rice.

Play Around

• You can give the pot pie treatment to just about any thick stew. Just make sure that, before topping and baking, everything in the stew is at a point where it’ll finish cooking during the half hour in the oven.
• You know what else is basically a stew with a topping? Shepherd’s pie. Replace the biscuit dough with a layer of mashed potatoes, maybe with some cheese mixed in. You probably don’t need the potato chunks in the curry, but I won’t stop you.
• If you’d rather have a pot pie with pie crust, make the filling in advance and cool completely in the fridge. Top cold filling with a cold round of pie dough, seal the dough against the edge of the skillet, brush with egg wash, cut a few vents in the dough to let steam escape, and bake until crust is golden brown.

Notes

• One test version had a tablespoon of furikake mixed in rather than cheese. This was, shall we say, unsubtle. If you like the flavor (savory, salty, and more than a little fishy), try baking a batch of biscuits that way, though I wouldn’t recommend topping a pot pie with it.

Japanese Curry Pot Pie with Miso-Cheddar Biscuits

Prep List

Equipment

Procedure

Notes