Thursday, December 14, 2006

Turkey pot pie


I know it's a little late to be talking about Thanksgiving leftovers, but maybe some of you still have as much turkey meat in your freezer as we do! In my humble opinion, there are few better uses for pre-cooked poultry than this pot pie. My husband and I often make this with chicken when we've roasted a whole bird and have a lot of leftover meat.

The recipe is based on this one from Good Eats (yes, we are Alton Brown junkies) but we do it rather differently than AB. The two things that make this pot pie superior are: 1) the curry in the sauce - the flavor is not obvious but it really gives it that special something; and 2) the small number of pots and pans required to make the dish.

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp. butter
1 c. diced onion
1 c. chopped celery
2 c. chopped carrots (can substitute frozen peas for some of this, if you like, or just add up to 1/2 c.)
1 large potato, peeled and diced smallish
1 1/2 c. turkey/chicken broth or stock (which you will, of course, have made from your turkey carcass)
1/2 c. milk
3 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. fresh ground pepper
2 c. cubed or shredded cooked chicken
1 package Grands biscuit dough (you can make your own dough, of course, but I'm lazy).

Directions:
Melt 1 Tbsp of butter in a large saute pan over low heat. Sweat the onion and celery for about 5 minutes, until the onion becomes translucent. Add the other veggies (make sure you cut them fairly small so they'll cook quickly), turn the heat up to medium, and cook another 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the broth and milk together in a small saucepan (you could also do this right in a measuring cup in the microwave, on low-medium heat).

Back to the veggie pan: Scrape the veggies to the edges as best as you can and add the remaining butter. Whisk the flour and curry powder with the melted butter and let that cook for a couple minutes (this makes a sort of roux to thicken the sauce, and eliminates the flour-y taste). Whisk in the hot milk mixture and cook until thickened. Add the salt, pepper, and cooked chicken, and stir thoroughly.

Place the Grands biscuits on top (one package contains six, which makes a perfect daisy in our 12" pan) and pop the whole thing into a 400°F oven (if your pan is not oven safe, you can of course transfer the filling to a casserole dish, top with the biscuits, and bake in that instead). Bake about 25 minutes, or until the biscuits are golden brown on top and the filling is bubbling up between them. Yum!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds yummy! We normally have turkey again at Christmas so we might get a chance to have it, yet!

Beth said...

My grandmother made the best plain chicken pie (no vegetables to yuck it up). I'm hoping to find her recipe when I move back East