These tarteletter med høns i asparges, or tartlets with chicken and asparagus, are one of our favorite Danish dishes. The combination of the delicious, creamy chicken and asparagus sauce and the crispy, flaky pastry shell is absolute perfection. Unfortunately, we don’t eat them as often as we’d like, as we can’t buy tarteletter shells in the US like we can in Denmark. And when we get them shipped from specialty Scandinavian stores, they always shatter 🙁 So, we decided to remedy this by developing our own recipe, and it does not disappoint!
In our family, we usually eat these as a part of our julefrokost (Christmas lunch), an important Danish tradition consisting of a very long meal with tons of courses and a lot of alcohol. But they are also delicious as a simple dinner, as they aren’t too difficult to make and you can really fill them with whatever you like! We would certainly recommend the filling in the recipe (høns i asparges), as it’s traditional, but it’s up to you.
The recipe includes both recipes for the pastry shells and the filling. The shells aren’t too difficult to make and the pastry is pretty forgiving. Try your best not to overwork it too much, though, as you want to end up with a very flaky, almost fragile final shell. The sauce starts off with a basic roux, then you add milk and bring to a boil until the sauce has thickened. Simply season to taste, add the cooked chicken and asparagus, fill your pastry shells, and voila! You’ve made tarteletter med høns i asparges. We hope you try it, and would love for you to leave a rating and review below if you do. Enjoy!
Buy the mini tart cases we like to use:
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Tarteletter (Tartlets w/ Chicken and Asparagus)
Ingredients
PASTRY SHELLS
- 300 grams all purpose flour (plus a little extra for rolling out the dough)
- 200 grams butter, cold
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 tsp salt
FILLING
- 450 – 700 grams chicken breast (sometimes, we find that the packs of chicken breast we buy are between 1 and 1.5 lbs, so any pack of between that size should work!)
- 400 – 500 grams asparagus
- 1 medium onion
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 56 grams butter
- 60 grams flour
- 375 ml milk
- 250 ml chicken stock (you may need a little extra!)
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- Fresh parsley (optional)
Instructions
- Start by making your pastry dough. Combine salt and flour in a food processor or mix by hand. Pulse a few times to combine. Add cubed, cold butter and pulse until it resembles sand. If doing this by hand, just break up the cold butter with your fingers and crumble until it reaches a sand like consistency.
- Add your egg and pulse until the mixture beings to form a dough, or mix together using a spoon in a bowl, then knead together with your hands to combine. Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Towards the end of the chilling time, preheat the oven to 390 F (200 C).
- After the dough has chilled, roll out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Prep your mini tart cases by rubbing them with a little bit of oil or butter (these* [this is an affiliate link] are the cases we use). You can also make these in a muffin tin instead! Cut out rounds that are larger than your tart cases and begin to line with the pastry dough. You can also break off pieces of the dough and just press it into the tin and all the way up the sides. It's totally fine if the pastry dough breaks and you have to patch it up! Make sure to press the dough into any ridges in the tart case.
- Once you've lined the mini pastry cases, trim the edge for a neater look. You can reuse the scraps by pressing them back together and rolling out again!
- We got 24 total pastry shells out of this but this may vary depending on the size of your tart cases. You may have to bake in batches!
- Once you have lined all the cases, set them on a baking tray. Bake for 18-20 minutes until lightly golden around the edges. Set aside to cool.
- While the pastry shells are baking and/or cooling, prepare the filling ingredients. Chop your asparagus into small rounds and finely dice your onion.
- Heat up a cast iron skillet with 1 tsp of olive oil and add your chicken. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until your chicken is fully cooked. You can also cook your chicken in the oven on a baking sheet; cook at 400F (205C) for 20-25 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 165F (74C).
- Take out the chicken and let it rest on a cutting board. In the same cast iron skillet, combine your chopped asparagus and onion, garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook until the asparagus is tender.
- To make the creamy sauce, start by melting 4 tbsp of butter over medium heat in a large pot. Once the butter has fully melted, add 5 tbsp of flour and whisk into the butter. You want to cook this just enough to get rid of any raw flour taste, so just a minute or two.
- After about a minute, start adding your milk to the pot slowly, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Once you have added all the milk, start adding your chicken stock, still whisking continuously. Bring the mixture to a boil for at least a few minutes. You should be left with a creamy and thick sauce. If it is very thick and more paste like, you can add more stock and whisk it in! Make sure to season to taste.
- Cut up or shred your cooked chicken. Once the base of the sauce is ready, add your asparagus mixture and chicken and stir to combine.
- If you're not going to serve them immediately, you can chill the filling and cover the pastry cases at room temperature until ready to assemble and eat. Just make sure to heat the filling up again before assembling! When you're ready to serve, spoon the mixture into your tart shells. Top with fresh herbs such as parsley and enjoy!
- A final note: you may end up with leftover filling! We wanted to make sure there was enough in case the tart cases you are using aren't the exact same size as ours. You can make a wonderful soup with the leftovers by simply heating up the filling and adding more stock!
Looks like a wonderful recipe for tarteletter!
I am wondering if you have any suggestions for making wheat free pasty shells. Please advise.
Much thanks and gratitude.
Marc
Hi Marc! Thanks so much for your comment. I’m definitely not an expert in making wheat-free baked goods, but I believe that replacing the regular flour with gluten-free flour and adding a teaspoon of xanthan gum into the recipe should work! If you do try it out, please let us know.
Can this recipe be prepared and frozen ?
Hi! We have not tried to prepare this ahead of time and freeze it, but I’ve read several other recipes/articles that say you can successfully freeze baked tart shells! A tip I saw said to make sure they are completely cooled down before putting them in the freezer. It sounds like the shells are usually then defrosted and reheated when you are ready to use them. I would imagine you could prepare the filling, freeze that, and then reheat it separately and then do the final assembly once both components, the tart shells and the filling, are reheated. Let us know if you try it!
I always use canned asparagus and use the juice for my gravy that is just the way it was done at my house, mom always used whole milk with the juice from the asparagus, it was so creamy and the flavor was out of this world .
Yes, using canned asparagus definitely works!! Sometimes we have trouble finding the canned stuff in our stores, but if you can get your hands on it, it is great!
Can you bake this in foil muffin cups?
Hi Diana! We haven’t tried it that way but I’m certain that you could. Just make sure to grease them really well so that the pastry doesn’t stick, as we typically use nonstick pans so that we can get the pastry out. Let us know how it goes!
Note the chicken should not be fried, it should be boiled ( with some veggies ), use canned white asparagus and buy the tartlets in the supermarket if they have them, much easier. Also use cream, water from the aspargus & some of the chicken soup from the boiled chicken with veggies, for the sauce.
There are definitely more traditional versions of tarteletter, this is just how we like to make ours! Especially as we cannot get canned white asparagus in our grocery stores. But if you can find it, you can make tarteletter however you like! 🙂
These are so addictive! We actually made ours by oven roasting the chicken (for convenience) and they came out soooooo good! Definitely a make again!
One of our favorites!! Thank you for leaving a comment!