Chicken Pie – Meal #3 of 3 from 1 Chicken

And finally, the 3rd installment, in “3 Meals with 1 Chicken.” Here is my recipe for Chicken Pie. Of all 3 dishes, this may be my favorite because it is such comfort food.

Here are the ingredients you will need:

Leftover Chicken Noodle Soup
Butter
Flour
Milk
Oil (I like to use coconut oil)
Baking Powder
Salt
Any frozen vegies you happen to have.

I had quite a bit of leftover soup and I was making this recipe for 11 children on a Saturday evening and for 5 adults and 4 children for the next day’s Sunday lunch.

I made 2 large pyrex pans. I am going to give you the approximate amounts for what I made. If I were to cut this in half, I would simply cut the dough recipe in half, but leave the rest about the same. You really cannot mess this up.

Chicken Pie Filling

Start by melting a stick of butter in a stock pot.

After it is completely melted, stir in about 3/4-1 cup of flour.

It may get pasty pretty fast, so be ready to add the milk. 1-1 1/2 cups. Or just add a little at a time.

Now just add a little flour or a little milk as needed. Your goal is to have it end up looking like this. Not too liquidy. More on the pasty side. This is going to thicken your chicken soup.

Stir in your chicken soup mixture.

It helps to have a Professional Stirrer. This is my best friend Jennifer. 7 of her 8 children (Abigail is too young) and my 4 children will be eating this Chicken Pie tonight. Check out her website. My hubby is cooking up some kind of surprise for the adults. Mmmm.

Add some salt and pepper to taste.

Now just pull out whatever frozen vegies you happen to have and throw them in. I’m glad I had peas and corn because I really like those in Chicken Pie. A little ice on the peas. Hey, no big deal.

Stir some more.

And taste. Jen is also the Professional Taster for the evening.

If you feel your mixture is not thick enough, like in this photo below,

pour it back in your pot (like we did) and add some cornstarch (we added about a cup) and let it cook on about medium. As it cooks, it will thicken. If you don’t have cornstarch, mix up some flour and water or milk into a paste and stir that in. If you don’t mix the flour and milk into a paste, you will have clumps. And, heaven forbid, we cannot have clumps.

Let that just sit and simmer on low for a bit while you make your dough for the top.

Dough

This dough recipe comes from one of my two absolute favorite cookbooks. The MOMYS cookbook. That stands for Mothers Of Many Young Siblings. I’m using the recipe on page 479 for Quick Biscuits by Jackie King.

6-8 cups flour
3 T baking powder
1 T salt
3/4 cup oil (we use coconut)
3 cups milk

Get out your mixer and your dough hook.

Start with 6 cups flour and 3 T of baking powder. I say 6-8 cups in the ingredient list because it depends on how course your flour is. I’m grinding our flour before I use it and fresh ground flour tends to be finer, so I tend to need more flour. But read on. You will just adjust to how it looks.

Add 1 T salt.

This is melted coconut oil.

Below you can see it hardened. Looks a bit like crisco from a distance, but it is the opposite in terms of health benefits.

Hopefully I remember to set the jar of coconut oil on this cup warmer ($1 at the thrift store) before I start cooking and it is all nice and melted when I’m ready to use it. I can’t remember where I got this idea, but thank you whoever you are!

I love it because I keep this jar of hardened oil handy for other things, like frying an egg, but then I can just pop it on the warmer if I need a larger amount for a recipe.

Mix 3 cups of milk and 3/4 cup of liquified oil into a measuring cup or bowl.

Pour it into your flour mixture and start mixing. My Kitchen Aid mixer says never mix dough on a higher speed than 2. It will damage your mixer. I stuck a note on it to remind me of that.

This still needs a little more flour. As you mix your dough, you may need to add more flour. A little at a time. You do not want this like bread dough that totally cleans the sides of the pan when it is correctly mixed up. This is biscuit dough. Biscuit dough remains a little wetter. A little stickier. Just a bit.

While your dough is mixing, pour your chicken filling into the pans. Yum. It’s looking good already.

Spread out some flour on your counter. You are about to roll out the dough.

This is about the consistency of dough that you want. Still has a little stickiness in it. Think about how commercial biscuit dough is a little sticky.

Roll it out, oh maybe to about 1/3 inch thick.

For 15 years I carried around a beautiful stone rolling pin that I NEVER used. Just wasn’t into cooking at that time. In a decluttering fit, I got rid of it. That is one of the few things I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of.

I use a pint size mason jar with the small opening to cut out the dough circles. But anything will work.

Now gather this leftover dough into a ball again, roll it out, and make more circles.

Use leftover dough pieces to fill in around the circles. Each serving will get a circle, plus some of the extra small dough pieces. Now put it in the oven and bake at 425 degrees for 10-20 minutes.