8 Store-Bought Chicken Pot Pies Ranked From Worst To Best

I seldom make chicken pot pie from scratch. It's not that I don't enjoy a good chicken pot pie — I certainly do — it's just that I tend to make shepherd's pie instead. Because I don't make it myself, I usually resort to picking up pre-made chicken pot pies when I'm shopping at grocery stores.

And after a lifetime of trying different brands, I've definitely noticed huge differences in quality. While some brands are really stingy with the chicken, others fill it up with nice, big chunks. The gravy inside the pie can be thick and creamy or thin and soupy, depending on the recipe.



These are just a few of the major differences between brands that make a big impact on the taste and texture of chicken pot pie. To bring those differences into clearer focus, I took it upon myself to pick up various brands of chicken pot pies and try them all at once, side by side; there are plenty of frozen pot pie brands available in supermarkets , but this article is only about chicken. If you're wondering which brands are worth it and which ones miss the mark, then you're in the right place.

Read on to check out my ranking of store-bought chicken pot pies, from worst to best — the results might surprise you. 8. Healthy Choice crustless chicken pot pie Ranking dead last is Healthy Choice's crustless chicken pot pie — though to be fair, I did not hold this chicken pot pie's lack of crust against it.

Instead, I judged this chicken pot pie purely on the quality of the gravy and the filling. Because there's no crust, this chicken pot pie doesn't require being baked in an oven and is designed to be cooked in a microwave. The plastic bowl has two separate tiers: the top tier has chicken, peas, carrots, and dumpling pieces, and the bottom tier has the gravy.

The directions instructed me to microwave the bowl, and then combine the chicken and veggies with the sauce once it was finished cooking. I'm going to shoot straight from the hip here. This is one of the worst microwavable meals that I've ever had.

As you can see from the photo, the chicken in this is downright frightening — ultra-processed, spongy, and seriously unsightly. After chewing on a strange piece of this stuff, I was so overcome with disgust that I couldn't bring myself to swallow it. The "gravy" was bland and runny — an extremely unappetizing liquid that's more akin to weird, salty water.

I will never eat this again. I wouldn't feed this to my cats. 7.

Marie Callender's plant-based chick'n pot pie This is another non-traditional chicken pot pie because it's not made with real chicken. Instead, the filling is made with a plant-based "chick'n" that's mostly made from soy. I'm not opposed to plant-based proteins that attempt to mimic meat, so I went into this with an open mind, but I was not at all impressed.

The biggest problem here is the plant-based chick'n, which has the texture of tofu. And that makes a lot of sense, since they're both made of soy. But there's something really unappetizing about a pot pie filled with protein that's super gelatinous.

Because pot pie filling is immersed in a saucy gravy, chunks of meaty chicken offer a reprieve from that liquified layer with some solidity. But these soy-based chick'n pieces are too mushy and silky to provide any texture. In fact, they kind of dissolve on the tongue like a sticky dollop of jelly, which is not exactly an ideal sensation for something that's supposed to emulate chicken.

Still, Marie Callender's chick'n pieces weren't quite as offensive as Healthy Choice's crustless chicken pot pie abomination, so it placed a notch higher in my ranking. 6. Banquet chicken pot pie Banquet sells a wide variety of classic frozen dinners including chicken pot pie, salisbury steak , and meatloaf.

I've tried a few of the company's meals over the years, and I've never been particularly impressed, so I went into this a bit skeptical. After baking this chicken pot pie in the oven, I sat down with a spoon and gave it a try. The gravy immediately flooded into my spoon, but I didn't spot any chicken, peas, or carrots.

I stabbed through the crust into another section of the pie, hoping that I'd find some actual sustenance. This time, I was able to spoon out a couple of withered veggies and a few small pieces of chicken. As strange as it sounds, when I took a bite, the first thing that came to mind was Campbell's chicken noodle soup (which is admittedly one of the best chicken noodle soups out there).

Because the gravy is so thin and kind of salty, it has the taste and texture of canned soup. And because the chicken is super spongy and processed, it has a very similar mouthfeel to those little cubes of chicken you tend to see in canned chicken noodle soup. At the end of the day, there just wasn't enough meat and veggies in this to make it enjoyable, and every ingredient was very low in quality.

The only redeeming quality here is the low price tag, but you certainly get what you pay for. 5. Marie Callender's chicken pot pie Unlike the previous Marie Callender's pot pie, this one has real chicken in it, so I was curious to see how it fared.

As I learned from Banquet, real chicken doesn't necessarily translate into tasty, so as you can imagine, I was happy to see that, unlike Banquet, Marie Callender's chicken pot pie recipe uses much better quality chicken. The chicken is also cut into surprisingly generous chunks. But that's pretty much where the good news here ends.

Similar to the other chicken pot pies on the lower end of the spectrum here, the gravy in this pot pie is thin and watery. The flavor is flat and mostly just tastes like salt. If the gravy were seasoned just a little more — all it would take is a touch more black pepper and a dash of dried herbs — this probably would've landed a little higher in the ranking.

4. Blake's chicken pot pie The first thing that I noticed is that the crust on this chicken pot pie is much lighter in color compared to the rest of the pot pies in this ranking. So much so, that at first, I thought that the crust wasn't fully baked, but that was disproven when I took my first bite.

As it turns out, the crust was actually much better than the previous pot pies in this ranking. It retains a buttery flakiness and tastes more like something homemade. I also noticed on the label that, unlike the previous chicken pot pies lower in this ranking, this chicken pot pie contains potatoes.

As I ate this chicken pot pie, I came to realize how heavy on the potatoes the recipe is. In fact, it seemed like the potatoes in this pot pie far outweighed the amount of chicken in it. I'm cool with some potatoes in the mix, but I'd much rather have more chicken than potatoes in my chicken pot pie.

On the plus side, the gravy was nice and thick — unlike the watery gravy that the other pot pies thus far suffered from. 3. Blake's gluten-free chicken pot pie This chicken pot pie features a gluten-free crust, so it's a good option for those with gluten restrictions in their diet.

The crust is made with ingredients that include brown rice flour, palm oil, sugar, tapioca starch, potato starch, sea salt, and baking powder. The crust on this wasn't really all that different from the crust on Blake's regular chicken pot pie — it just seemed a little drier and a tad more crumbly. The gravy in this pot pie tasted just like the Blake's regular chicken pot pie.

While the gravy in this pie was nice and thick, it could still have used a little more seasoning. The ingredients included in the fillings are also the same as Blake's regular chicken pot pie: Chicken, potatoes, carrots, and peas. Yet for some reason, I definitely noticed that the filling in this gluten-free variety contained far fewer potatoes and much bigger chunks of chicken.

Because this pot pie contained more chicken and fewer potatoes, I decided it should land a little higher in the ranking. 2. Bettergoods chicken pot pie First off, it should be noted here that the quality difference between the last ranking and my top two is enormous.

The flavor of this Bettergoods chicken pot pie is very close to homemade and tastes lightyears better than any of the chicken pot pies that ranked below it. The gravy is thick and pleasantly peppery with a nice touch of thyme and rosemary. The crust is buttery and flaky.

The veggies inside are generously portioned and have a surprisingly fresh flavor and texture. The addition of diced celery gives the gravy an earthy pop that also helps it land toward the top of this ranking. Out of all the chicken pot pies that I tasted, this is definitely one that I would happily buy again.

The filling was also nice and thick compared to the crust, which makes this feel like a truly filling meal. But perhaps most importantly, the chicken was perfectly seasoned and didn't taste frozen at all. You could have told me that it was cooked from a fresh chicken breast moments before and I probably wouldn't have second-guessed it.

That's one heck of an accomplishment for a frozen, store-bought, mass-produced chicken pot pie. 1. Chef Ramsay's chicken pot pie Before this article, I don't think I'd ever tried any of Chef Ramsay's prepared meals.

Of course, I have a lot of respect for Ramsay's culinary skills, but I also know that sometimes celebrity endorsements don't always necessarily translate into a high-quality product. I'm happy to report that's certainly not the case here. This was easily the tastiest chicken pot pie of the bunch.

The crust on this pie appears to be almost cracker-like, and I was a little worried at first, thinking it would be too dry. But after trying a bite when it was out of the oven, I realized that the crust's firmness allowed it to maintain its structure and provided a nice textural contrast to the gravy and filling. The chicken in this chicken pot pie was tender and juicy, but what really shot this pie to the top of this was the gravy.

The gravy contains minced mushrooms that infuse throughout the sauce, giving it a delicious richness that blows all of the other options in this ranking out of the water. The only downside here is that I feel like the pie should have more gravy and filling. But the overall flavor of this pie was spectacular and it was clearly made with great attention to detail.

This chicken pot pie was truly delicious and I would absolutely buy this again because it tasted so good. How we ranked pot pies Above all, I judged these chicken pot pies based on the flavor and texture of their ingredients. All of the pies in this article were cooked exactly according to the directions on each label.

I then sampled them side-by-side while jotting down tasting notes to use while writing this article..