If you’re a high school English teacher in the great state of Texas, you may fondly refer to this week as Hell Week. Both English tests are upon us, the stress is high, the schedules are grueling, & our minds are gone. Thankfully I find cooking therapuedic, so I’ll be making or prepping 3 dinners tonight to brace myself for the week ahead. The common protein for this week (just because we really need to use it up) is chicken.
On the menu are chicken noodle soup, green chile chicken enchiladas, & for tonight, chicken pot pie. I’ll also use up the rest of my 5 lb. bag of Russet potatoes & make some twice baked potatoe casserole. But that’s another post. : )
The biggest time sucker of this dish is the prep work; peeling & dicing the carrots & potatoes, dicing the onions, & letting them cook down. But after the prep is done, everything else is super easy!
After I prepped my veggies, I put about three tablespoons of butter into a sauce pot. We only cook for two, & we’re not huge fans of leftovers, so we usually just make what we can eat that night. We are HUGE fans of potatoes in our pot pie though, so I ALWAYS double up on those. Since I didn’t know we were out of garlic, & the hubs totally forgot it when he was sent to the store, (he was distracted by a pineapple & brownies) I decided to just use garlic salt in its place. We’ll see!
First, the potatoes went in to cook alone for a bit with the lid on the pan over medium heat. Then I added the onions & carrots to the mix & let them cook together without the lid for a few minutes. When they seemed to be halfway done, or a little more, I made a well in the center of the pan & added two tablespoons of butter & the same amount of flour. I married everyone together, & once everything was incorporated, I added 2 cups of chicken stock, as well as one cup of frozen peas.
While I let everything simmer together on low heat, I seasoned the chicken breasts (for the rest of my meals this week as well), & headed out back to the grill. I love grilling chicken for so many reasons: it’s fast, it’s easy, there is hardly any clean up. I mean, who doesn’t love those things?!
The chicken was done in less than ten minutes since the cut was pretty thin. (The hubs bought them; I don’t usually buy the thin cuts, but it worked out for the best!) Once I let them rest for a few minutes, I started chopping them up. I know I should have shredded them for the enchiladas, but convienence is key this week.
When the chicken was chopped & ready to go, I added it into the pot pie mixture, which had come together beautifully. I usually mess up my thickening agents, but not this time! Heck yes! It was the perfect consistency, & nothing was overcooked. YAY FOR ME!!!
The only thing left to do was add more pepper & some garlic salt, then add the biscuits on top. In the spirit of making things do or doing without, I tried to use Flakey Layer biscuits. The hubs suggested I smush the layers down out of them & “use them up.” So, I tried, & close, but no cigar. The bottoms didn’t cook as well as they should have. The regular homestyle biscuits cook more evenly & can take more oven time without burning – lesson learned. I ended up removing the top few layers of the bisuits & using those to top our “pies.” The rest, I flipped over & let cook a little longer.
The final product was delicious, even though we didn’t get to use fresh garlic or my preferred biscuits for the meal. We even had enough to make a normal serving for two (which would probably be three because the hubs has no understanding of portion control), & an extra one I can freeze so he can set it out on Sunday morning before he goes & plays hockey Sunday nights. He gets home after our daughter goes to bed, so this is the next best thing to a frozen meal. (He comes home hungry!)
Let me know if you try this recipe, especially if you make any alterations! Signing off until I make a chicken dish again! So, until tomorrow! : )
Mz Rike
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