Chicken Pot Pie

I have no idea why I decided to try making chicken pot pie. The only time I’d ever eaten it was at the dining hall in college. I had a recipe bookmarked, probably because it was a featured recipe one day, and randomly decided that I needed to give it a try. So I did.

Start off with a pound of chicken breasts, cut into small pieces. With mine, this was something like 2 chicken breasts. The rest went in the freezer.

Then cut up some carrots and celery.

I put the chicken into a saucepan.

Topped it with the carrots and celery

And some frozen peas.

Then I covered everything with water and cooked it for a while.

While that cooked, I melted some butter in a big skillet.

Added some chopped onions and sautéed it for a while.

When the onions were translucent, I added a bit of flour.

Along with salt, pepper, and celery seed.

Then as it cooked, I slowly added both milk and chicken broth, whisking and cooking until it was creamy and thick.

Then I explored my store-bought pie crusts. Should have used homemade, but didn’t feel like doing all that. I unrolled the first without reading the package, and it cracked in the process.

Trying to prevent that, I nuked the second one for 20 or 30 seconds, as per the directions. That was a mistake, as it softened so much that it was impossible to unroll. This is what I ended up with.

By this point, the chicken and veggies were done, so I drained them and put them in my pie shell.

And then I topped it with my cream sauce.

Then I tried to figure out how to get my smooshed pie crust on top of it. I managed to pry it off the cutting board and got it onto a plate.. but then I had to repair the tears and rips, so it was stuck to the plate.

This was my best idea.

I had to use a spatula to get the pie crust on the chicken pot pie, it looked like this. I tried to seal the edges, but cream sauce leaked and ended up on top. I tried to vent the shell, too, but only ended up with puddles of cream sauce. I decided to quit ruining dinner and put it in the oven without any more tweaks.

Not bad, not bad!

Okay, yes, it’s leaking, and yes, it’s a bit dark on the edges, but the golden brown is pretty awesome. If I’d made my own pie crusts, I would have had much more success, but this isn’t bad.

I felt the need to take a picture of the first cut. I guess it was a magical moment.

It was goopy and difficult to serve, but I know that’s because I couldn’t wait to cut into it, like I should have.

But it sure was tasty. Really, really good. Hubby told me that this is how chicken pot pie is supposed to taste, so I guess that means I did it right.

I think I’ll be adding this to the rotation.

Dirty Rice

I was looking for more things to do with the shallots that my Aunt had sent me a few weeks ago. Hubby had some ideas, having grown up using shallots in Cajun rice down in Louisiana. This was my attempt to combine his verbal accounts with a copycat recipe for Popeye’s Cajun rice (aka dirty rice).

I started off with a stalk of celery.

And diced it up pretty finely.

Then I did the same with a green bell pepper.

Next, I turned to the shallots.

And diced a couple of those babies up, too.

Finally, I used a few cloves of my Aunt’s homegrown garlic.

With all that prepped, I started browning a pound (or maybe a pound and a half) of ground beef.

Then I added my diced celery and green pepper.

Finally, I added the garlic and shallots.

When it was done, I drained the grease and added some long-grain rice.

And then water, of course.

Along with some seasoning.

A little bit of Cajun seasoning…

And a little bit of cayenne.

Then I put the lid on and let it simmer for a while.

When it was done, I fluffed the rice and gave it a taste. It was a little bland, so I added some Tony’s creole seasoning. I didn’t use it before because it’s so salty, but at this point I decided it could use the extra flavoring.

All mixed in, this is what it looked like.

In the end, it could have used more seasoning. I had been real careful not to overdo it because I’ve ruined food by using too much creole seasoning, but I really should have dialed it up a notch. Other than that, though, not bad. A good first attempt at dirty rice!

Roasted Chicken Noodle Soup

Seems an odd time of year for it, but a cold has been making its way through the members of the household for the last week or so. I decided to take advantage of my current joblessness and made some chicken noodle soup for everyone.

I had previously decided not to blog about recipes that I’d gotten from other blogs, but I made an exception for this one. Chef John from foodwishes.com posts excellent video blogs about various recipes, dishes, and techniques. I love his site, both for the food and for the humor that he sneaks in to each video. A while back, he had posted a two-part video about roasted chicken broth and chicken noodle soup, and I couldn’t un-forget it for the sake of my own easier, albeit unremarkable soup.

So here goes.

First, I started off by making the broth. This is a roasted chicken broth, so let’s start off by roasting a chicken. Chef John said to use a 3.5-4 pound chicken, but Wegman’s didn’t have anything smaller than 5 or 5.5 pounds, so mine was a little bigger than intended. No worries, I just left it in the oven longer.

I sprinkled it with a generous amount of kosher salt.

Next, I quartered an onion and cut up some celery.

Here’s everything in the pan together.

I put it in a 400 degree oven for an hour. Chef John said 45 minutes, but given that my bird was almost 2 pounds heavier than his was, I thought an extra 15 minutes was prudent.

In the meantime, I heated up my lunch: leftover chili and cornbread. Mmm!

This is what it looked like after an hour. It was so pretty, I almost wished I could just stop here.

But I didn’t. I transferred the vegetables to a big soup pot. I also added a few whole cloves of garlic. Bear with me, as there is no overhead light above this stove.

Ketchup is Chef John’s secret ingredient in the broth.

Throw the ketchup in there.

Then add 2 quarts of cold water.

Finally, pull all the white breast meat from the chicken off the carcass and set it aside. I didn’t let it cool enough, so I did this messily with tongs in one hand and a steak knife in the other.

Put the remaining carcass in the pot, dark meat and all. In addition to the bones, you want to include the wings and thighs. Because of the size of my bird, I added 2 extra cups of water just so that everything would be covered up. At that point, maybe season with some more kosher salt and then you’re good to go. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for 3 hours. Yes, THREE. That’s enough to get all the flavor out of the meat and into the water.

During this process, you can do two things. One, skim off fat as it comes to the surface. There is a lot of fat, since I didn’t remove the skin. Second, add water if necessary to keep the water level constant. I didn’t have to do this, as I had a lid over the pot and not much seemed to evaporate.

After three hours, this is what it looked like.

Now it’s time to remove everything chunky from the broth. I used a big slotted ladle to remove the biggest chunks.

When mostly everything was out, I strained the broth through a colander. I would have used a sieve, if I could find one, but this worked fine.

Here’s all that beautiful roasted chicken broth, ready to go.

Next, I prepared everything for the chicken noodle soup and set it aside until it was nearly dinner time.

I chopped up the breast meat that I had removed earlier.

And I diced carrot, celery, and onion.

See, here’s everything all ready to go.

About a half hour before I wanted to serve, I melted some butter in the soup pot. When it was melted, I added those veggies and started to sauté them.

After a few minutes, I added about a tablespoon and a half of that reserved chicken fat and let the veggies continue to cook and soften.

When they were starting to get tender, I returned the broth to the pot and turned it to high.

When it came a rolling boil, I added about half of this package of wide egg noodles (3 of the 6 clumps), breaking them up a bit so the noodles weren’t too big.

After about 5 minutes, I added the chicken and let it simmer, too. I also added some more salt to the soup, as well as a healthy shake of cayenne pepper.

And then it was done!

I served with some grilled cheese sandwiches. Nom nom nom.

This was good soup. It was really, really good. It was much better than my normal chicken noodle soup, which I make without roasting the chicken. But, it’s also a lot more time consuming. I don’t think I’ll be making this again for a long time, simply because it just takes forever. For now, though, we have a vat of leftover soup that I will enjoy. That is the wonderful thing about making soup.

I definitely recommend it if you have the time, but I also think there are easier recipes out there.

And I’d also recommend giving Chef John’s website a look. It’s worth it.