Easy Chicken Pot Pie

 

Fall is here and so are those cravings for comfort foods.  My friend Lori made up this recipe for Chicken Pot Pie, and I love it!  I was going to go on here about what a fabulous cook Lori is, but now that I think about it, I've never actually eaten anything she has prepared.   She talks a lot about recipes and meals, so I can say she talks a great game.  (I'm 100-percent sure she's a great cook.  I know she loves it.)

 

Anyway, here are the ingredients for the pie:

 

Pie Crusts (2)  (purchased or homemade)

2-3 Cups Cooked Chicken

Frozen Peas or frozen peas and carrots or whatever vegetable(s) desired

Pepper to Taste

Teaspoon (or so) of Tarragon

3 Cans Country Fare Cream of Chicken Soup

4-8 oz. Cream Cheese (optional)

  

Cook the Chicken.  You can buy chicken already cooked, you can buy it and cook it yourself in the oven or on the cook top, but I like microwaving mine.  I have a pottery container (you can get one from Pampered Chef or, like me, get one for about the third of the price at Wal-Mart ).  Put just a little bit of water in the bottom of the dish and add chicken.  I usually use chicken tenders (the strips), but chicken breasts were on sale this week, so I went that route.

 

Chicken before microwaving.  Barely any water in the bottom of the dish.

Cook the chicken, covered, for approximately 8 minutes.  My dish has a lid, you just can't see it here.  One of the chicken breasts was pretty large, so I had to cut it into fourths and heat it an additional couple minutes.  If you use chicken tenders, 8 minutes is usually plenty of time--just cut into it after you cook it and make sure the pink is gone.  The chicken turns out very tender and juicy.  We make chicken like this all the time, and just add BBQ sauce or leave it plain.

Back to this recipe:  Cut up the cooked chicken into the size of chunks you like.

 

I'm including this picture so you can see the cans of Country Fare Cream of Chicken Soup.  I'm not sure if this is a local brand or not.  I know it's available in Iowa Hy-Vee stores.  If you don't have it in your store, you'll have to experiment.  Lori says it's a good consistency because it's between a gravy and a soup.

 

Heat one can of the soup and mix in the cream cheese.  (Avoid adding gourds--they're just in the background.  I should have moved them.)

 

Mix all the pie ingredients together:  chicken, heated soup and cream cheese, vegetables, tarragon, and pepper.  It looks like this:

Note to self:  use a bigger mixing bowl next time.  You'll notice my mixture now has corn in it.  Just before this picture was taken, things went bad in my kitchen.  I hadn't noticed that one of the cans of soup was actually cream of mushroom.  It kept itself hidden from me until after I opened it--even going so far as to hide in the back of the picture of the soup so I wouldn't notice.  After I opened the can of mushroom soup, I went to my pantry thinking I was all smart in the kitchen and grabbed a can of creamed corn to substitute.  I opened that can, then discovered it was regular corn, not creamed.  Believing all cans were scheming against me, I was lucky to at last open a can of creamed corn.  I only used about three-fourths of it, because it was larger than the can of cream of chicken soup called for in the recipe.  I imagine Lori is laughing reading this now whilst she has a healthy dinner in the oven, some bread dough rising, and perhaps some vegetable canning underway.

 

Pour the mixture into the prepared pie crust.  Lori heats her bottom crust for 8-10 minutes at 425 degrees to avoid sogginess before filling it.

In all honesty, I think if I  make another full-size pie, I'll just omit the bottom crust completely.  (I imagine Lori throwing up her spatulas in despair now.)

 

I used homemade pie crust, because it is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE THING TO MAKE.  See my post on pie crusts HERE. 

 

After you add the filling, put on the top crust and trim to fit.

 

Crimp the edges and add some slits for steam to escape.  I'm a weirdo, so I made mine look like chicken tracks:

 

Bake for 40 minutes at 400 degrees.

 

And here's the finished pie again:

 

My serving wasn't quite so pretty, but it tasted wonderful:

 

FYI:  This is a small sized plate--I did not eat half the pie.

I will definitely make this chicken pot pie again.  I'd like to get some individual-sized pie pans and make them that size and maybe even freeze them.  Try this recipe.  Hopefully, I've bolded the real important parts of the instructions, and hopefully your canned goods will cooperate.

Thanks, Lori, for the recipe!  And thanks for giving me permission to blog it.  You're welcome as a guest blogger anytime!