Chicken Pot Pie Bake

 The rotisserie chicken at Sam's Club is a wonderful thing. For under five bucks, you get an entire cooked chicken ready to bend to your will. If you lack creativity, you can simply just rend the meat from the bone and eat like a savage. Alternately, you can use that cooked meat in any number of exciting recipes and then use the carcass to make a savory soup stock! Or you can just do the Midwest thing and bust open a can of cream soup and make a bake. That's what we did here. The only thing that we did to spice it up was add a packet of Sazon, as that makes most anything better. The Spud had seconds, which is a ringing endorsement. Fair warning: If you're storing leftovers, consider taking the baked shell off the top before storing it and heating it in the oven separately later. If you leave it on overnight, it suffers some sort of chemical breakdown on the bottom and gets all sticky and gooey. Give it a try and see what you think! If you don't like it, don't tell me. I'm emotionally fragile. As always, any notes are in blue.

Chicken Pot Pie Bake

Ingredients

• 3 cups cooked chicken, cubed
• 1 can (10.5oz) cream of chicken soup
• 1 can (15oz) mixed vegetables, drained
• 1 can (15oz) cut green beans, drained
• 1 packet Sazon seasoning 
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 tube (8oz) crescent rolls

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F (200C/Gas Mark 6)
2. Grease 13" baking dish
3. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except crescent rolls.
4. Empty contents of bowl into backing dish.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.
6. Find someone brave enough to open the tube of crescent rolls, because those things are absolutely terrifying. 
7. Unroll the crescent rolls. and press together into a sheet. Take the dish out of the oven and lay that sheet over the top of the contents of the baking dish, making sure the dough reaches the edge of the dish. (obviously be careful, as the dish will be hot)
8. Return dish to oven and bake an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

Look at the Golden Deliciousness.
LOOK AT IT.

Good times!

Too Damned Easy Turkey Pot Pie

Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted a pot pie? And your mom would have to preheat the oven? Then you'd have to wait like another 45 minutes for the pot pie to cook? Then you'd be so hungry that when it finally came out of the oven, you wouldn't wait and you'd take a bite and burn the living shit out of the roof of your mouth? Good times. This recipe won't take quite as long, but can still blister the hell out of the roof of your mouth if you don't wait. We cannibalized a different recipe to make this. In retrospect, the pie to biscuit ratio seems off. There is way more biscuit than filling. I'd recommend at least adding some more gravy and possibly increasing the amount of the fillings. The flavor is fine, it's just a bit biscuity. As always, notes are in blue.

Too Damned Easy Turkey Pot Pie

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 stalk celery, finely chopped
• 1/2 pound frozen hash brown O'Brien potatoes, thawed
• 1 6 oz. can mushrooms, drained and chopped
• 1 medium carrot, shredded
• 2 cups cooked turkey, chopped (cooked chicken would work just as well. You can use puffin for all I care.)
• 1/4 teaspoon marjoram
• 10 ounces gravy (in retrospect, I feel you could add another 6 ounces and be fine, if you prefer a more gravy-based pot pie)
• 1 can Pillsbury Grand buttermilk biscuits (we used their Sweet Hawaiian. You can use any flavor. Also feel free to use a non-name brand equivalent. I promise not to tell anyone)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F  (200C, Gasmark 6)
2. Heat oil in cast iron skillet. (Don't have a cast iron skillet? Philistine. In that case you're going to need to prep everything but the biscuits in a pan, then transfer to an oven-safe dish)
3. Add celery, potatoes, mushrooms, and carrots. Saute for 5-7 minutes.
4. Add turkey, gravy, and marjoram. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.
5. Lay biscuits over the contents of the pan. (If you're not using cast iron, transfer the contents of the pan to a 9" round oven safe dish and then lay the biscuits down on top)
6. Cook in oven at 400F for 14 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown.

Good Times!

Homebound Day #15: Tempers Flare

We are into the third week of shelter-in-place and we got the news from the Governor: the order to hunker down is extended through the end of April. At this point it is unlikely we will be able to avoid going to the store for that long. At least not as far as milk goes. Supplies are doing well. However, we have noticed that tempers are a little shorter than normal. Fortunately, we have lots of good food to keep our spirits up, or there'd probably be casualties by now. We've been having quite the exciting time with food. We decided to do a Thanksgiving in March.

The upshot is this Thanksgiving was relatively quiet due to the lack of visiting relatives.

We've also made sure to make a few kid friendly meals. You'd think any 4 year old would be happy to have cheesy pigs in a blanket and French fries!

You'd be wrong.

We've also been making sure to bake something fun at least once a week. Last week we made two loaves of colored bread. This week it was something sweet: chocolate chip peanut butter bars.

These should last about 18 minutes.

We had a fair amount of leftovers from our Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly, an 8-1/2 pound turkey breast was a bit too much for two adults and a four-year-old. I had a brilliant idea and made it into a tasty turkey pot pie that my daughter would not eat.

See her turn it down in HD!

So there we have it. We're at home for another month. Hilariously, we just got the coupon book for our local grocery. I figure we'll wait another week so anyone who has to get in there right at the first of the month can do so. Then I'll get in there, grab some necessities, and get the hell out before I catch something.

Stay Safe!

Sausage and Kale Biscuit Pie

     It's always fun when I decide to freestyle in the kitchen. It's also generally messy, but the end results are worth the destruction. The whole inspiration for this recipe came from a tube of butter-flavored biscuits that was sitting in the fridge. We tend to leave them in there until they explode, so I figured maybe I should use it. I also had a surplus of Polish sausages in the freezer, so I decided those were going in, as well. From that point I decided I was going to make a quasi pot-pie. The addition of malt vinegar was a last minute decision and one the wife and I were very pleased with. I undercooked the potatoes a bit by mistake, so in the recipe I suggest par-boiling them. If you're looking for a tasty mid-week filler meal, this might be for you! As always, any notes are in blue.

Sausage and Kale Biscuit Pie

Ingredients

• 1 16-ounce tube butter flavored biscuits
• 1 package (13-16 ounces) of Polish kielbasa, sliced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 small red potatoes, cubed
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 rib celery, chopped
• 4 cups kale, leaves only, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• Black pepper to taste
• Malt vinegar to taste

Directions

1. Par-boil potatoes, about 10 minutes.
2. Get a great big pot and sautee all the vegetables for about 10-15 minutes. (You're basically making sure the potatoes get cooked enough so they're not crunchy when you go to serve them).
3. Add the kielbasa, oregano, black pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Pour in the cream of mushroom soup and stir everything so the soup is coating all the ingredients evenly. 

   

   You should be looking at something similar in your pot at this point.

4. Pour the bowl into a lightly greased baking dish. Sprinkle a few dashes of malt vinegar over the top of everything. Take the biscuits from the tube and lay them out in a single layer.  Bake at 350F for about 12-15 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown (the underside of the biscuits may be a bit squishy. There's not much you can do about this.) Sprinkle the cheese over the top and bake another 3-5 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Good times!