Sarra Ina Garten’s chicken casserole is a creamy baked dish with roasted chicken, carrots, peas, and pearl onions in a rich chicken stock sauce, topped with homemade parsley biscuits. It serves 8 and takes about 1 hour 45 minutes from start to finish.
This recipe comes from Ina’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook, where she calls it Chicken Stew with Biscuits. She says it’s “essentially the filling for a chicken pot pie topped with homemade biscuits” and loves that the same base works with her lobster pot pie filling from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook too.
The sauce has to be thick before the biscuits go on top. Ina cooks the flour and butter roux for a full 2 minutes on low heat, then adds hot stock so it thickens fast without lumps. Skip the roux step and you get watery filling that soaks through the biscuits.
Ina Garten Chicken Casserole Recipe
Course: DinnerCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy8
servings30
minutes1
hour15
minutes520
kcalRoasted chicken and vegetables in a buttery stock sauce, baked with drop biscuits on top until golden and bubbly. From Barefoot Contessa Family Style, this is Ina’s version of the ultimate comfort dinner.
Ingredients
- For the Stew:
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3 whole (6 split) chicken breasts, bone-in, skin-on
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3 tablespoons olive oil
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Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
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5 cups (1.2L) chicken stock, preferably homemade
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2 chicken bouillon cubes
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12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks / 170g) unsalted butter
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2 cups (300g) chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
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3/4 cup (95g) all-purpose flour
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1/4 cup (60ml) heavy cream
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2 cups (260g) medium-diced carrots (4 carrots), blanched for 2 minutes
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1 (10 oz / 280g) package frozen peas
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1 1/2 cups (210g) frozen small whole onions
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1/2 cup (30g) minced fresh parsley
- For the Biscuits:
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2 cups (260g) all-purpose flour
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1 tablespoon baking powder
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1 teaspoon kosher salt
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1 teaspoon sugar
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1/4 lb (1 stick / 115g) cold unsalted butter, diced
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3/4 cup (180ml) half-and-half
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1/2 cup (30g) chopped fresh parsley
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1 egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
Directions
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Roast the chicken: Preheat the oven to 375F (190C). Place the chicken breasts on a sheet pan, rub with olive oil, and season generously with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes until cooked through. Let cool, then remove the meat from the bones, discard the skin, and cut into large dice. You should have 4 to 6 cups of chicken.
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Heat the stock: In a small saucepan, heat the chicken stock and dissolve the bouillon cubes in it. Set aside.
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Make the sauce: In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter and sauté the onions over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until translucent. Add the flour and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add the hot chicken stock and simmer for 1 more minute, stirring until thick. Add 2 teaspoons salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and the heavy cream.
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Assemble the casserole: Add the cubed chicken, blanched carrots, frozen peas, pearl onions, and parsley to the sauce. Mix well. Pour into a 10x13x2-inch baking dish and place on a sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes.
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Make the biscuits: While the filling bakes, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a mixer with the paddle attachment. Add the cold butter and mix on low until the pieces are pea-sized. Add the half-and-half and mix on low. Stir in the parsley. Roll the dough out on a floured board to 3/8 inch thick. Cut 12 circles with a 2 1/2-inch round cutter.
- Top and finish baking: Remove the casserole from the oven. Arrange the biscuits on top of the filling. Brush with egg wash. Return to the oven and bake for another 20 to 30 minutes, until the biscuits are golden brown and the stew is bubbly.
FAQs
Can you make this chicken casserole ahead of time?
Yes, and Ina actually recommends it. Refrigerate the chicken stew and the uncooked biscuits separately.
When you’re ready to serve, bake the cold stew for 25 minutes first so it heats through. Then place the biscuits on top and bake for another 30 minutes until everything is golden and bubbly.
This makes it a great dinner party dish because you do all the real work earlier in the day.
Why does Ina use bouillon cubes in the stock?
The bouillon cubes add extra depth to even good homemade stock. Ina uses them alongside real chicken stock, not instead of it.
The combination gives you a sauce that actually tastes strongly of chicken instead of just tasting like creamy gravy. If your stock is very rich already, you can skip them, but the sauce may need more salt to compensate.
What is the best way to blanch the carrots?
Ina calls for blanching the diced carrots for 2 minutes in boiling salted water before adding them to the filling. This softens them just enough that they finish cooking evenly in the casserole.
Raw carrots stay too crunchy in the time it takes the biscuits to brown. Overblanched carrots turn mushy. Two minutes is the sweet spot.
Drop them into ice water right after blanching to stop the cooking.
Can you swap the biscuit topping for puff pastry?
Yes. Ina does exactly this in her French Chicken Pot Pies from Make It Ahead, where she uses store-bought puff pastry over a very similar filling with leeks, mushrooms, and tarragon.
Roll the pastry slightly larger than the dish, drape it over, seal the edges with egg wash, and cut a few slits for steam. Bake at 400F (200C) for 30 to 40 minutes until puffed and golden.
Puff pastry gives you a crispier, flakier top. Biscuits give you something more like a cobbler.
Does this casserole freeze well?
The filling freezes well for up to 3 months. Let it cool completely, then pack it into a freezer-safe container without the biscuits.
Don’t freeze the biscuits on top because they turn soggy when thawed. Make fresh biscuits the day you serve it.
Thaw the filling overnight in the fridge, then bake at 375F (190C) for 25 minutes before adding the biscuits and finishing as usual.
