Back to school dinners: Chicken pot pie recipe

CINCINNATI - Back to school: Dinners

Let’s face facts; getting dinner on the table is a chore. Especially when the kids have afterschool activities and maybe you’re like me, and you work until it’s dinnertime. Whatever the reason, I know I want my children to eat well. Frankly, it’s because I don’t want to eat junk either.

I’m no expert, but I know what works for me and my hope, through this blog and the “vlogs”, is that I can share with you some recipes, plans and ideas. Together maybe we can save a little time, a little money wouldn’t be bad and a little sanity would be heaven sent. Let’s face it, we’re all “living it”. Whatever that “it” may be.

So, last night I made a dinner that was FABULOUS. Chicken potpie. My kids lapped it up and, with it was a snap. I made the actual dinner on Sunday night and my husband popped it in the oven when he got home on Tuesday.

Sunday is my night to get things in order for the week. It didn’t take a ton of time, but the result was out of the park and the great news? I have enough pie filling and pie crust left over (it’s in the freezer now) for next week’s dinner. SCORE!

I’m not really into re-inventing the wheel, so I started with an ace of a recipe by Ina Garten. She’s fabulous and I’ve made the recipe to her specifications in the past and it’s delicious, but I don’t feel like blanching veggies on a weekend night. So I made some alterations and I think the end result spoke for itself (the whole thing was GONE, devoured, decimated. Fantastic!).

So, here it is. Enjoy it. We did. It’s now going into the recipe rotation at my house.

Chicken Pot Pie
· 4 good sized split chicken breasts, skin on and bone in (or if you need to save time, buy a grocery store cooked rotisserie chicken)
· 3 tbsps olive oil
· kosher salt
· ground pepper
· 5 cups chicken stock (I like low-sodium)
· 2 chicken bullion cubes
· 12 tbsps unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks)
· 2 C yellow onions, chopped
· ¾ C all-purpose flour
· ¼ C heavy cream
· 4 C of cut frozen veggies (note: my husband doesn’t like peas, so we buy veggie bags that don’t have peas)
· pre-made rolled pie dough (two come per package. I use just one on top and save the rest for the 2nd pie that I make at a later date)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Season chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes. Set aside. If you bought a pre-cooked chicken, obviously skip this step and move on to the next thing.

When the chicken is cooled, remove the meat from the skin and bones. Cut the chicken into a large dice, or shred, whatever you prefer. If using a pre-cooked bird, use all the meat on the chicken.
In a saucepan, heat the chicken stock and bouillon cubes. Meanwhile, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion over medium-low heat until they are translucent. Add the flour and stir for 2 minutes. Add the chicken stock to the onion/flour mixture. Simmer for one minute. It will thicken nicely. Add 2 tsp salt, ½ teaspoon pepper and the heavy cream. Add the chicken and the frozen veggies. Mix.
Pour half the mixture into a pie plate and cover with one of the pre-made pie doughs.

Note: at this point, I put the rest of the filling in a freezer bag, labeled it and put it in the freezer for another day. Same with the remaining pie dough. Also, I didn’t cook the pie that day. I covered it in plastic wrap, and wrote remaining instructions for my husband on a post-in note. We ate it two days later and it was just fine.

When cooking, heat oven to 375 degrees.

Put pie on a cookie sheet to catch any overflow. Crimp the dough on the pie if you’d like, and cut a couple of slits on top. Brush dough with egg wash (egg and a little water). Sprinkle with salt and pepper if you’d like and cook for 1 hour.

Delicious.

Serve it with a salad and you’ve pretty much got a balanced meal. No pretenses, this has cream (not a lot) and butter (yes, a lot). So, maybe it’s a little bit of a splurge meal.

You can assemble the second pie, wrap it and put it in the freezer until you plan to use it, but I chose not to. Instead, I’ll let it all defrost in the fridge overnight and prepare it before I head to work in the morning.

Enjoy and let me know if you any great ideas for making meals easy and/or in advance. Maybe I’ll give ‘em a try and put it on the blog!!  Email me at torourke@wcpo.com or find me on facebook "Tanya O'Rourke WCPO"