One Good Ritual

For this week’s meal prep and as a Father’s Day gift to myself I smoked a pair of chickens on my new barrel smoker and also improved my portable lunch meal prep in the same stroke.

Goal

Building on last week’s curry buns, this week I wanted to make a hand pie that gave the experience of a backyard barbecue. Chicken, coleslaw, bread.

Method

Prepare dough for buns, active starter, AP flour, bit of turmeric for coloring, water. I ran this batch at about 65% hydration. Stand mixer to knead for about 10 minutes for good gluten development before bench fermenting for about 5 or 6 hours. After the ferment I chilled in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to firm it up, this proved mostly useless during the shaping stage.

Smoked chickens on hangers in the barrel smoker for about 4 hours until breast temp was about 180F.

Sauce consisted of the chicken drippings that collected in the bowl with the two birds, mixed with some tomato paste and apple cider vinegar (ACV). This was mixed with the meat before adding in the vegetable filling of red onion, carrot, slightly wilted and pressed cabbage.

What Worked

The dough actually did retain some gas, which I didn’t need but the turmeric color came through nicely. I think this method will be much more useful for the curry buns, rather than dying the egg wash with turmeric.

For the enclosure, the pies were envelope folded and then the seam side was placed down on the baking sheet. This led to a much more presentable end product. This did produce a slightly more doughy area in the center where the edges came together but this was minimal compared to previous sealing methods. The pies left the parchment virtually clean, some slightly cooked egg and maybe a few drops of sauce that leaked(?) but this seems like the most efficient closure.

With the improved sealing method I was also able to enjoy a much better dough to filling ratio. At 80g of dough and about 80g of filling the entire pie is completely filled.

The breast at this 180F was nicely pull-able into long strands, rather than mush. Nice. Smoke flavor was still present in the meat, I think this was due to the hanging method.

The ACV and tomato paste, along with the drippings, really gave it that coleslaw flavoring with the richness being replaced by the drippings instead of mayo.

What I’d Improve

For this particular iteration, my only improvement for next time would be a slightly cleaner egg wash. I ended up with a bit of omelette around the bottoms, only a few drops here and there.

I might also experiment with some other seasonings in the dough, perhaps some of the barbecue rub itself mixed into the dough like onion, garlic, and mustard powder.

By the final 3 or 4 pies I actually got into a much better rhythm with wrapping them so I think for next time I should have nearly identical pies rather than a lineage of improvement from the first to the last.

Final Thoughts

For the smoker’s maiden cook, I think I absolutely nailed the chicken and one step further, I think the pie came together nearly perfectly. I think the sauce worked well, just wet enough to help the, still moist, chicken be just a touch more damp after the bake. I’m quite pleased with how this batch ended up, now to see how they hold up to the workplace microwave and toaster oven. 1min microwave, 5 min toaster oven.