The TV Dinner Company That Released The First Ever Frozen Pot Pie

As frozen meals go, there are certain dishes you can count on seeing time and time again in the frozen food aisle, regardless of the brand they are made by. Salisbury steak (an old-school dish no one eats anymore), fried chicken, lasagna, and macaroni and cheese come to mind. One specific frozen staple requires no microwave-friendly tray and not even any sides or dessert to go with it; the mighty pot pie is a meal in and of itself. Today, you can find several flavors of pot pies, including chicken, turkey, beef, vegetable, and more, but chicken pot pie was the original, introduced by C.A. Swanson company in 1951.

The introduction of Swanson's pot pies actually pre-dated the company's popular frozen TV dinners in the aluminum trays by a few years. Meat pies had been around for ages by this time in history. In fact, historians believe the prototype came about in ancient Greece and Rome. These consisted of a variety of meats and seafoods baked in pastry crust. By the medieval times, meat pies were popular in England where they were made with wild game and, sometimes, live birds that would fly out of the crust in vivid displays of presentation. By the time Swanson took an interest in freezing pot pies and selling them to the public, people largely preferred the birds already chunked and cooked in the crust. The company's early chicken pot pies consisted of chicken, gravy, green peas, and red peppers inside a pastry crust. Today, more veggies are included in addition to lots of spices and preservatives.

Although Swanson released the first frozen pot pie, plenty of companies followed suit. Banquet introduced its own chicken pie in 1953. Some restaurant chains even released their own frozen versions, like Boston Market and Marie Callender's. Soon after, beef and turkey pot pies joined the original chicken. Today, you can get cozy, comforting, frozen pot pies without any meat at all, in gluten-free versions, and in low-calorie options. As for Swanson, the company currently makes chicken, turkey, and beef varieties.

As one who makes several chicken pot pies every year, I can attest that they are surprisingly easy to do from scratch. It's really just a matter of cooking chicken in a skillet, then making a gravy from the chicken drippings, plus flour, chicken stock, heavy cream, and a little white wine. Once the gravy is thickened, I just add in a bag of frozen vegetables. I pour the mixture in a pie plate, place my pie dough on top, and bake it in the oven. I usually opt to make my own pie dough but admit I have used the boxed, prepared pastry in a pinch. I have even used frozen puff pastry, which is excellent. What I don't do, however, is make individual pot pies for my family. Instead, I prepare one large pie and scoop individual portions from it. In this way, frozen pot pies, in their perfectly portioned, individual sizes, have the upper hand in presentation. Plus, no one has to share their buttery crust.