Thursday, August 7, 2008

What's for dinner, Chicken pot pie


Last night we had a bucket of yummy fried chicken courtesy of my favorite Colonel. Today, we had the leftover chicken, in the form of chicken pot pie. This recipe is a great way to use up any leftover chicken or turkey (Thanksgiving anyone) and you can improvise the ingredients with what you have on hand.

For the chicken or turkey you can use leftovers, rotisserie, breasts, precooked strips, really anything will do. The key is whatever you use to make sure you season it when you cook it if it isn't already. I like my pie with lots of meat so if I use a rotisserie chicken I'll use practically the entire thing. But if I only had about half of a chicken, that's what I'd use and it would be just fine.

Time:
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients:
2 9" frozen pie crusts (they come sold in packs of two and are great to have on hand at all times)
2-3 cups cooked chicken or turkey (diced or shredded)
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables
1 can cream of chicken soup (I use cream of chicken with herbs to add more flavor)
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup frozen onion
1 TBLS minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste (I like LOTS of pepper in this dish)
optional: other spices I like in this dish are curry and cayenne pepper

Directions:
* Let pie crusts defrost
* Preheat oven to 375
* Saute onion and garlic
* Add chicken, vegetables, soup, milk, and any seasonings. Stir together. Remove from heat (veggies will still be frozen, that's ok).
* Add mixture to one of the pie crusts
* Take the other pie crust out of the tin and add to the top of the pie. Cut to fit and crimp the edges together.
* Put the pie on a cookie sheet and put in a 375 degree oven for 30-40 minutes.
* During the last 15-20 minutes of cooking, add strips of tin foil around the edges of the crust to keep them from getting burned or over cooked.
* Top should be nicely browned.

Notes:
The basics to this pie are the pie crusts, cream of chicken soup, chicken, and veggies. The portions of chicken/turkey and veggies aren't all that important. The types of veggies can vary depending on your mood or what you have on hand. If you didn't add any other ingredients or seasonings to this dish it would be a great meal. But you could also easily add five or six spices to it for fun and a kick and introduce a whole new flavor. Have fun experimenting with it. It really is very versatile.

7 comments:

Belle (from Life of a...) said...

We love potpie...I'll have to try your recipe soon. Thanks for replying with the story about your grandfather. Corn dogs and fatback....That's priceless!

LauraC said...

For pot pie, we use the refrigerated rollup pie crusts. They can be frozen for up to 2 months... then I don't have a stack of alum foil pie pans sitting around! I pop them in the fridge the night before and they are defrosted in time to cook dinner.

Mama Mia said...

Oh Yum, I love me some pot pie!

Outnumbered2to1 said...

Chicken pot pie is my fav. Thanks for the easy recipe. Thanks for stopping by my blog yesterday. I just loved your hat solution to a bad hair day!

Michelle said...

Yum yum yum! I love chicken pot pie... but how do you turn on the oven in the summer? I can't bear to "really" cook in the summer. It's grill or crockpot or quick griddle. Usually grill. But I hate the heat. This almost sounds worth it though!

Anonymous said...

You have the BEST recipes! I can't wait to try this one!

Susan said...

Collecting recipes trying to will myself to cook more (good luck with that!) I am not a peas and carrots girl, so I may experiment with some other veggies. Thanks!