Chicken pot pie

We've made it before, usually using the version on the back of the Bisquick box, but we wanted to try the Joy of Cooking version.  It ended up taking much longer than we'd thought to put everything together and we discovered Joy of Cooking's interesting method for information organization, but we ended up with a pretty delicious meal.

Our notes:

• There was the recipe for chicken pot pie, but the first step was to make creamed chicken.  The first step of the creamed chicken recipe was to make poached chicken which was itself its own recipe.  Only too late did we see that there was a "quick creamed chicken" recipe that used cream of chicken soup rather than making a sauce out of flour and butter.  Oops.  There went several minutes, but the results were worth it.
• The recipe called for a lot of flour relative to the amount of butter, but despite my misgivings it did not seem to be a problem.
• The actual chicken pot pie recipe called for us to cook the carrots, onions, and celery before throwing it into the baking dish with the chicken.  It was later than our usual dinner time, and we didn't want to have to wash another pan, so we didn't bother to precook anything.  I thought this added some nice texture to the chicken pot pie.  I view homogenous textures as the epitome of boring food.
• BUT, the poached chicken recipe told us to poach the chicken with onions and celery; instead of discarding these as the pot pie recipe called for, we just threw them in with everything else.  A good idea as they added some flavour and texture.
• The pot pie recipe did not call for any spices except for some chopped parsley.  Dried parsley did just as well.
• We made a half recipe, which included making a half recipe for the top crust.  Would make somewhat more than a half recipe of batter next time as there didn't seem to be enough.
• The top crust turned out more like drop biscuits--better than a solid crust over the entire thing.
• Cooking time: 18 minutes in an 8"x8" glass baking dish

No photo as we were both too excited to finally eat after all of the prep work, but definitely a recipe to make again as there were also no leftovers.


Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 103