Saturday, March 26, 2011

Weekend Cooking March 26 - PW's Chicken Pot Pie




Weekend Cooking is hosted at Beth Fish Reads

I'm slowly making my way through Pioneer Woman's Cookbook...and am still really happy with all the results.
I'm back this week with another Pioneer Woman recipe...Chicken Pot Pie...I've made lots of variations of chicken pot pie...from the boxed kind that bakes for 40 minutes to the VegAll/cream of chicken kind...PW's version is a little more time consuming but is worth the difference in taste. 


I start off with the freshest chicken I can find where we live...we actually know the Sandersons and they stand behind their product. 



I do not very often buy a whole cut up chicken, but PW said it was a good idea to use both light and dark meat for this recipe.






Then I scour my sink with soft scrub and bleach...I'm a germ freak when it comes to raw meat :(






While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up my vegetables...no Veg-All in this recipe.
Yes, I really did chop up every little bitty piece of onion, celery and carrots for this pie :)





I separated the chicken from the broth...





and of course, separated bite sized pieces of chicken from the bones.






I saute'd the onion, carrots, celery and frozen peas in butter for just a few minutes.





added the chicken...and stirred...





...then added flour and stirred again. 
At this point I let the mixture so far cook for just a few minutes before adding any other ingredients.





I used 2 cups of the chicken broth saved from boiling the chicken and one boullion cube.





and then 1/4 cup white wine...
and yes, yes, yes, of course I had a sip ;)








1 cup of heavy cream is the last ingredient before the final cookdown for 4 minutes.




Thyme, salt and pepper meld all those tastes together...





before pouring the mixture into a baking dish...






Now, PW went into a lot of detail about how to make crust...and I did my best...but as you can see in the picture above...mine wasn't too pretty :)
It still tasted fine...but definitely needs work in the attractiveness category.

The specific ingredients are follows:

3 celery stalks
3 medium carrots, peeled
1 large yellow onion
4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 cups cooked chicken (light and dark pieces)
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 chicken boullion cube
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp ground thyme
1 tsp salt
black pepper

PW also has a Turkey Pot Pie recipe on her blog that is identical to this one, except, of course, it uses turkey.

Enjoy!

14 comments:

  1. WOW! That looks delicious! You gave me a craving! I cheat with the crusts and use store-bought because I am sort of dough-challenged, but boy, does that look like good comfort food!

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  2. I have to say - that filling looks great. I tend to like my pot pie with crust on the top AND bottom though. I guess it could be adapted. PW rarely steers us wrong.

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  3. It does look delicious. I sometimes buy a whole chicken and do my own cutting and skinning and boning, but usually I'm lazy and buy skinless, boneless chicken breasts.

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  4. Love the step by step pictures; I felt like I was in the kitchen with you :)
    I'm impressed at how uniform your vegetable chopping was; I always end up with some large lumps, lol.

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  5. You may think your crust looks less than perfect, but I imagine it tasted wonderful -- and you get extra points for all the finely-chopped veggies!

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  6. wow, we are of one mind this week, you and I, aren't we?
    I totally agree about starting with the whole chicken. of course mine was 'whole' whole because they were on sale.

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  7. This looks delicious and I totally understand the germ freak thing (I am too)and I love your kitty too.

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  8. I love all things Pioneer Woman! You're right, she's never steered me wrong either. I so love a chicken pot pie. I do cheat though and buy the crust already made. Shameless! I actually miss cooking. Can't wait til I'm more mobile and can get back in the kitchen.

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  9. Pioneer woman always makes me laugh and sometimes tear up but I can always trust her recipes. This one looks delicious.

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  10. Carol, PW's crust recipe is one that she makes in batches and then cools until she needs it...I didn't have time to do that so it might have made a difference? I may try store bought dough next time :)

    Mindee, crust on the bottom and top sounds good to me too!!

    Beth, I guess there's something about the cooking the pieces together that gives in that homey, fresh chickeny taste...but I don't always have time for that either.

    Dawn, in PW's cookbook she actually gave step by step instructions on how to line up the veggies and cut them just so... :) I had a lot of time on my hands that day for some strange reason :) Those are the days that I really like to cook :):)

    Caite, I thought the same thing when I read your recipe this morning :)

    Alex, thanks! That's Uh-Oh :)

    Paula, I bet you are getting a little stir crazy :( You'll be up and around in no time though!!

    Margot, it is :)

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  11. Amazing!!! Thank you for this fantastic recipe, if I have time, I will cook it this week, it looks delicious!

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  12. We love pot pie in our house but only make it when we've roasted a chicken. We strip all the meat off the carcass and then TBG makes soup (which we freeze) and I make pot pie. Pillsbury pie crust works for me. Yours does look so yummy. Thanks for the info about Sanderson Farms.

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  13. That looks wonderful! A rustic pot pie doesn't need a perfect crust.

    I buy my chickens whole at the Farmers Market and cut them up myself. It took 5 chickens and a month to finally feel like I had handle on it. The cutting up part was fine after a couple of chickens, but it took more time and chickens to figure out how to debone the chicken breasts. That was three years ago and now it's no big deal at all.

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  14. I didn't know the Sanderson Family Farms was actually just that...when I see the word "natural" it usually doesn't really mean that so thank you for product info. I think your pie crust looks perfect for this type of recipe. The men in my house would love this recipe.

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