Sunday, September 13, 2009

Reinventing Chicken Pot Pie

I had the hugest craving for chicken pot pie, but I had no idea how to make it, and felt way too lazy to look up recipes on the internet - so I just made it up.
First, I made a stew out of the following:
-two chicken thighs
-one chopped carrot
-one stick chopped celery
-one clove crushed garlic
-1/2 a yellow onion
-1 1/2 cups chicken stock
-spices (in this case, mostly pre-packaged poultry spice since I was so lazy)

I let that simmer while I mixed up the biscuit dough. Biscuits are very simple:

Ingredients:
-2 cups white flour
-4 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 tsp baking soda
-about 3 tbsp cold butter (you can use more or less as you see fit)
-about 7/8 cup milk

First, I mixed together the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter using a pastry cutter until none of the butter bits were larger than a pea. I added the milk and just mixed it in - if you overmix, your biscuits will be chewy.

After the milk is mixed in, ordinarily you would take it and knead it about 10 times on a floured surface - again, if you overknead, it will be chewy. This time, however, I just sort of spread it out until it made a top "crust" for the stew in my casserole dish. This recipe usually makes about 10 biscuits, and I still had enough left over to make 3, so I used 3/4 of the dough.

I stuck this in the oven at 400 deg F for 10 minutes and presto! Chicken Pot Pie!
Notes:

-The chicken part was a little watery. In the future, I would add something to make it thicker - some kind of starch. Potatoes or flour or cornstarch or something along those lines.

-I think the biscuit dough on the top was a little thick. I would probably use about half the entire biscuit recipe next time - it tasted a little too much of baking powder for a chicken pot pie.

-Also, it occurred to me how easy it would be to make biscuit dough ahead of time. Just do everything except add the milk, then freeze it until you're ready for biscuits. When you want to bake them, you add milk and mix until you get the proper consistency. Mmmm... biscuits.

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