WTF? Marie Callender's messes with their famous Chicken Pot Pie recipe? DUMB!
- Thread starter Overmind One
- Start date
Much closer! San Jose, CA 95117 is a long way from where I live, but that means shipping is possible overnight.
$49.95 for 12 pies like this: http://www.aussieproducts.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AP4BM
Gatefan1976
Well Known GateFan
It seems that there are a few in Callie, that was just the first one I came across
The testimonials *look* like they come from Aussies for the most part, but I can't vouch for thier veracity of course
shavedape
Well Known GateFan
CAPTURED IN PHOTO.
It seems like lots of people are encountering Marie Callender's new soup and a cracker "Chicken Pot Pie."
View attachment 7122
Just..... Can they call that a pie? I mean legally... They charge $9.00 for that bowl of soup! The experience of it is easy to describe. Get a can of Progresso chicken chunk soup, dump it in that white bowl, microwave it for about 2 minutes, then lay a pre-baked cookie on top made with the dough they used to make the crust with. The picture shows the result.
.
Wow! That is bad! :dispirited: I didn't quite understand what you were talking about at first but now that I see the pic I can't believe a restaurant would try to pass that off as chicken pot pie. It's a freakin' bowl of soup, period! Surely you can't be the only one who has complained about this publicly.
Gatefan1976
Well Known GateFan
Just out of curiosity, how big are these "pot pies"?
The bowl has a 6" diameter and is about 4" deep. The bowl is the same as the original, but before you would have the crust baked onto the rum with crunchy bits of over-baked crust around the sides which was good to eat.
Then, inside the bowl it had crust which was lining the bowl and you could scoop some with every bite. The top crust used to be flaky and looked something like the fake cookie they now use.
Yep, and that picture is not from me, it was taken by another person complaining. It was the clearest example of what I found by looking for the complaints. And there are LOTS of them. It used to look like this (not my photo)
The new soup and cracker thing is not only NOT a chicken pot pie, but that once awesome filling full of chunks of identifiable white chicken breast meat, peas and fresh cut celery and carrots has been replaced by a heavily cornstarched gruel with very few vegetables and tiny cubes of "chicken" which could be mechanically separated chicken like is used in Mickey D chicken Mc Nuggets. AWFUL. And it still costs $9.00!
Illiterati
Council Member & Author
Their new "chicken pot pie" looks like crap. The Chicken Pot Pie at my local bar looks more like the one in your last picture, OM1, but much bigger. You'll have to come out this way sometime and I'll treat you to one.
Big fat chunks of white meat chicken in these pies...serious CHUNKS. Something to wrap your mouth around.
I know it'd mess with the low carbing, but a periodic "cheat" can be forgiven in the name of SCIENCE!
Big fat chunks of white meat chicken in these pies...serious CHUNKS. Something to wrap your mouth around.
I know it'd mess with the low carbing, but a periodic "cheat" can be forgiven in the name of SCIENCE!
I might just take you up on that! Meat never messes with low carb, but that flaky, delicious crust does! One pie crust is equivalent to 4 slices of bread, or about 48 carbs.
But in the name of science, I am willing to injest carbs for...research. 
SciphonicStranger
Objects may be closer than they appear
CAPTURED IN PHOTO.
It seems like lots of people are encountering Marie Callender's new soup and a cracker "Chicken Pot Pie."
View attachment 7122
Just....
That's exactly as you described it and it is still just as appalling. Charging $9 for it makes it borderline criminal. :facepalm2:
Illiterati
Council Member & Author
I'm going to have to take a picture of the one from the local bar...I'll put my phone next to it for size comparison (best way I can think of to do that). Real solid pieces of chicken...none of that prefab crapola.
It takes more than 1 hr prep time to create an UNBAKED chicken pot pie, which is then baked when ordered. I have watched them do it. They bake the chicken, prepare the veggies and sauce. Then another person prepares the pie dough, presses it into the bowls. After the chicken and veggies and sauce are combined, there is a vat of the filling simmering in the kitchen. They ladle the filling into the dough lined bowls and then press the top of crust on the bowl and refrigerate. When somebody orders the pie, they take it out of the fridge, and bake it until golden brown (about 15 or 20 minutes). That is how it is done.
This new "chicken pot pie" involves no preparing of ingredients. Its in a huge CAN and not prepared onsite. The ingredients are substandard, and the "chicken" looks suspiciously like mechanically separated chicken like used in Mc Nuggets or formed chicken patties. There is no "grain" in the meat. That is not possible when you use chicken breast. The peas have dimples, which means they were previously frozen. The carrots are tiny chopped cubes instead of scallop sliced. The sauce is now primarily cornstarch instead of cream and butter.
The bad pie costs less to make and takes almost no time to prepare. You can bake a whole sheet of crust cookies in 20 minutes, and the preparation of the "filling" takes less than 5 minutes. All the cooking of chicken and veggies is no longer an overhead of manhours. This new recipe is designed to increase profits and nothing more.
Gatefan1976
Well Known GateFan
Thats pretty big, the pies we were talking about are probably about 4-5" in diameter, but only 2" deep at best.The bowl has a 6" diameter and is about 4" deep. The bowl is the same as the original, but before you would have the crust baked onto the rum with crunchy bits of over-baked crust around the sides which was good to eat.
SciphonicStranger
Objects may be closer than they appear
Chicken pot pies are usually about that size over here as well.
Which is why I said what I did. This is all about moving the prep kitchen offsite, which usually is done to save costs. It saves them both in hours used and also in the number of actual trained and certified cooks/chefs they need. But in raw materials cost the ingredients because of the canning and other freezing and preservation techniques may cost the same or even a little more - but they make that up and more on labor.
Before I got to my current field I spent a dozen years in the restaurant business, mostly in management. In that capacity I got to witness firsthand the huge quality difference between a "kitchen" with commissary pre made foods and a full prep kitchen.
The commissary type kitchen can have unskilled workers prepare the food (following specific directions) and get a minimum quality level - it saves labor dollars but also puts a quality ceiling on the food because it is pre done. On balance it is cheaper because although the pre made food costs a bit more to bring in the lower labor cost more than offsets it.
The full prep kitchen bring in scratch ingredients and makes everything in house - the cost for the food is less but the labor cost is more (because you need actual certified chefs/cooks to do this properly). The food quality is really up to the head chef at that facility - the floor is lower but the ceiling is higher. A bad chef in a full prep kitchen is a disaster but a good chef in a full prep kitchen is a marvel.
I will close with one thing I observed way back in the early, early days of my 12 year restaurant jaunt. I spent some time at a Popeye's Chicken. They were trying to do it both ways - run a full prep kitchen with unskilled help (not certified cooks/chefs). So we had teens making FROM SCRATCH chicken batter, buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatoes, red beans and rice and so on. To say the food quality was uneven was to say little.
Several years after I left I heard that Popeye's finally moved to a commissary model for their kitchens - in their case it was the only way to get some consistency in quality short of hiring certified cooks/chefs for each fast food restaurant which would have caused prices to skyrocket. So sometimes the commissary model is appropriate. But from my understanding of Marie Callendar's it is not appropriate there because they sell themselves as a specialty restaurant. Specialty restaurants in my experience and opinion should have skilled chefs/cooks and a full prep kitchen.
Highlander
GateFans Cadet
What I was served was a bowl of creamy chicken stew with a "cookie" on top.:icon_eek: Yep. The bowl was the same, but it was filled with creamy chicken stew, and there was a "cookie" made of the same crust material laid on top of the bowl, so it LOOKED like a pot pie but was not. No crust in the bowl at all, which means that they simply ladled in the creamy stew, and then heated it up and laid the cookie on top. 10 whole minutes of work. I get it, they have saved 40min prep time, but they are still charging me the SAME PRICE. It pissed me off enough to call the headquarters office.
That so wrong what the hell. So are they gonna do the same to the frozen version? I mean I have long loved the pot pies but if its gonna be like that I won't bother.
Thanks for the warning.
That so wrong what the hell. So are they gonna do the same to the frozen version? I mean I have long loved the pot pies but if its gonna be like that I won't bother.
Thanks for the warning.
The frozen version is the only REAL Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie left. But I suspect they will change the luscious filling for the gruel they serve in the restaurants with the cookie "puck" floating around on top. It would be very difficult to freeze that faux pie since it has no crust at all. Perhaps they will simply sell you a microwavable pouch and slip the cookie in another pouch and have you dump it in a container they provide? Trust me, you would do better with a can of chunky creamy chicken soup from Progresso, then stop some Ritz crackers on top and blam, there is your "pie".
Gatefan1976
Well Known GateFan
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Buy the Aussie pies
Im hooked.
But that crust is extremely high in carbs! Man, if Americans ever discover Aussie meat pies and the variety they come in, it could spawn a fast food chain! 
This is my source: http://www.aussieimportcompany.com/ and they are in Sherman Oaks which is about 45 minutes from where I live.
My favorite so far: http://shop.aussieimportcompany.com/Party-Pies-0001-2.htm
These little pies are perfectly sized for a snack.
That awesome gravy and the beef in a little hand held pie is just not done in America yet, but it makes the perfect fast food meal. The first ones I bought were the full sized pies here: http://shop.aussieimportcompany.com/Meat-Pies-00008-6.htm
I gotta hand it to you man, I would never have known about Aussie meat pies if I had not seen that picture you posted a while back. I even put the dollop of ketchup in the middle!
