Saturday, December 5, 2009

Deep Dish Chicken Pot Pie



It would seem these last few days have been spent doing everything but blogging. I actually made this recipe back then, but am only just now getting around to the writing part.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how tricky it can be to make chicken pot pie when you don't actually have any chicken in the freezer like you were convinced you did? Good thing I've learned some improv skills in the kitchen over the last few months. You can rename this recipe "Deep Dish Steak Pot Pie" if you're going to emulate my version.

I have a kitchen scale now but was in too much of a hurry to whip it out to weigh the steaks that I was using to replace the chicken. Instead, I did some fancy math using the following formula: Two chicken breasts usually equals roughly a pound of chicken. Therefore, 2 flattish steaks will probably equal roughly a pound of meat. Voila! Instant substitution.

Since I was making the dead cow version of this recipe, I used beef broth instead of chicken broth. Personally, I don't favour one over the other; rather, I was trying to be consistent. I figured the kitchen gods might look more favourably upon me if I didn't get too carried away. Some days, I can use all the help I can get...

With the peas/carrots as well as the frozen bland bean mixture, I JUST had 3 cups of vegetables so I chucked in a drained can of mushrooms as well. I did make sure the frozen veggies were thawed as directed because I didn't want my mixture getting too soupy. I had read a review on the Kraft site where one person complained that their version was really runny although they conveniently didn't mention if they'd followed the recipe precisely or not. I also drained off a lot of the liquid that came after cooking the meat, but I don't know if the same amount would be generated had I used chicken.

The rest of the recipe was pretty uneventful, aside from trying to convince the thawed pie shell that it was no longer necessary to cling to the pie plate as it was so strongly trying to do. I manhandled it very gently and eventually it gave up the ghost. I tried to flute the edges of it in my Corelle dish, but yeah, not so much. It looks a little mangled.

Result: Well received by my taster even though I thought the sauce was a wee bit thin for my liking. I guess one could always increase the cream cheese to thicken it up. This recipe is also good for breakfast, fyi :)

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