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This is an excellent weeknight recipe, because you don’t need to cook a chicken from scratch to make it. Most supermarkets have a prepared food/deli department that sells rotisserie chickens.
If you have Boston Market in your area (I know they are now in areas other than greater Boston), they are having a special where if you spend $19.99 or more on a Family Meal, you can get a rotisserie chicken for just $1.99.
I happened to have leftover roast chicken in the fridge, so that is what I used here. Note that I cross-filed this in the toikey day category, as this could also be a turkey pot pie, using Thanksgiving leftovers.
The biscuit topping is much easier than having to roll out a regular pie crust. Refrigerator biscuits are a perfectly acceptable ingredient, especially for the baking-impaired among us. Pillsbury makes a good product here.
However, I had the time, so I made my own biscuits. I have this cast iron drop biscuit pan, so I used that.
Another thing I did was make my own chicken stock, rather than buying it at the store. There is certainly nothing wrong with the store-bought variety, so if you can’t be bothered to make your own stock, use it. I recommend the Swanson brand here, and I prefer the boxed variety over canned. With the boxes, if you don’t use it all in your recipe, you can just reseal it and keep it in the fridge. Please be sure to buy the low-sodium variety, this is easy enough to find. The regular kind is always too salty and can ruin your recipe. Also, too much salt is bad for your health.
However, you can save money by making your own chicken stock. I am a big advocate of using a slow-cooker to make stocks, it’s something I got from a book called Slow Cooker Ready & Waiting: 160 Sumptuous Meals That Cook Themselves
The night before you plan to serve the pot pie, pick all of the meat from the chicken. The skin can either be discarded, or eaten…I consider it to the the chef’s treat…LOL! Put the chicken meat into a container and refrigerate until ready to use.
Put the chicken carcass into a slow-cooker that has at least a 5 quart capacity. You don’t need to hack it up or anything, I just put it in whole. Then roughly chop a couple of carrots, an onion, and a rib of celery with leaves, and put those in with the carcass. I don’t bother to peel the onion or carrots. Ass a couple of sprigs each of fresh parsley and thyme, about half a dozen whole black peppercorns, and a bay leaf. If you don’t have fresh herbs, use a couple of pinches of the dried variety instead. This recipe is NOT written in stone, use what’s on hand!
Add water to cover, put the lid on the cooker, and cook this on LOW overnight. The next day, strain it into a metal pot and discard the solids. They have given up all their flavor and nutrients to the stock, so they are not very good for eating.
If you are not going to use the stock right away, it is important to “quick-chill” it before you put it in the fridge. This is why I told you to strain this into a pot. Never attempt the following in the crockery insert of your slow cooker…cold water hitting the hot crockery will cause it to crack. Then you’ll have nothing but a big mess and the need to buy a new crock-pot.
To “quick-chill”, close the drain on your sink and put the pot of stock in the sink. Fill the sink with cold water, up to almost the top of the pot. Don’t let any water get into the pot of stock! This will quickly bring the stock down to a temperature where it’s safe to put it in the fridge, about 90 degrees F. I know that doesn’t sound “chilled”, but it was much hotter than that before. It’s all relative.
Never put anything in the fridge that is hot from the stove, oven, or crock-pot. Always let it cool down first. Putting hot food in the fridge not only reduces the efficiency of the fridge, but can also cause other foods therein to warm up and possibly spoil. This was something that the chef-instructors hammered into our heads at culinary school, but it’s just as important in the home kitchen!
For a more intense flavor, I like to boil the stock down. If you do this, just be careful not to boil it down too much, as you will need 2 3/4 cups of it for the pot pie. Any stock not used for the recipe can be refrigerated for a few days, or frozen if you want to keep it around longer.
So, whether you use homemade biscuits and chicken stock, or store-bought, give this recipe a try. It’s very easy and very, very tasty!
