Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot PIE!!!

David Cross explains...

Now we're onto one of my favorite dinner pies!  I remember growing up and painstakingly waiting for the individual frozen ones to cook in the oven (30 minutes?!  Who are they kidding?) before diving in and scalding my mouth on the delicious chicken lava that erupted from this metal tin of goodness.

And then they introduced the microwavable ones, and it only took 5 minutes before joy was at my fingertips.

And then I ordered a chicken pot pie for dinner at Perkins right before a soccer game in high school and thought I was going to be sick as I ran around with 2,000 calories of chicken and cream and crust rolling around in my stomach.

And then it was back at Perkins two weeks ago that I saw a waitress carrying a pie to a nearby table and it dawned on me to cook up a chicken pot pie for myself!

Seriously, I LOVE the stuff.  It's the perfect comfort food.

So I set to work on finding a recipe, this time learning from my mistakes on the last pie and reading the comments section for each recipe.  I found one that looked great and got great reviews, and after tweaking the recipe a bit based on suggestions from the readers, I set to work.

It's a basic set of ingredients: crust, chicken, chicken stock, cream, flour, butter, onion, celery, carrots, peas, and garlic.  I purchased a rotisserie chicken, rather than cook it up myself, and for a few good reasons.  Rotisserie chickens are the most delicious time-saver ever.  They're juicy and packed with flavor, so you don't have to worry about the chicken being too dry if you were to cook it yourself, and they're extraordinarily cost-efficient.  I only used about 1/3 of the chicken in the pie!

Also, this time I decided to measure out all of the ingredients ahead of time and set them out in front of me.  I completely get why cooking shows do this.  I tend to be a frazzled cook, and I often overcook things as I scramble to mince the garlic I forgot about or sift the flour.  With everything pre-chopped and pre-measured, baking this pie was smooth sailing!

Basically, you melt a shit-ton of butter in a pot, then sautee in the onions and garlic, add the flour, chicken stock, and cream and simmer that until it thickens.  Then add in the veggies and chicken and pour the whole mixture into a crust.  Put on the top crust, bake it, and voila!  Chicken Pot Pie!

Holy pollo, it was awesome!  Just as good as any pot pie I've had before, if not better.  And it was so remarkably easy, I can't wait to try it again.  I'll just have to remember to make twice as many pies next time... we gobbled this one up quick!

With the leftover chicken, stock, and veggies, I made a pot of chicken soup (look at me go!), which was also quite good, especially considering the only seasonings I had were garlic powder, salt, pepper, and oregano.  And I still had leftover chicken!  Seriously, rotisserie chickens are fantastic.

So anyway, that's that.

Now, in the last post I mentioned the possibility of a Laura/Paula project, which could've been cool had my boyfriend not come up with something that's roughly 1,486 times better.

Get this: Cooking Across the U.S.!!!

I'm going to spend next year cooking a dish (or a meal) from each of the 50 states!  How cool is that?  That way I either get 2 weeks off, or I use those 2 weeks for Thanksgiving and the 4th of July (U.S. holidays don't get more American than that). 

But anyway, I'll cook by region and start up a new blog to get ideas from people across the country on what dishes I should cook.  Appetizers, salads, main courses, fish, meat, desserts, drinks... everything is up for grabs.  And I'll share the stories of that food and that state and hopefully learn (and provide) a bit of insight into the history and culture of the U.S.

Now, I just need a name.  Pans Across America?  The United States of Food? 

However it turns out, here's to another year of yummy goodness.  :)