Here's what you'll need:
- 2 unbaked pie crust (made from scratch or store bought. I make mine. It's easy. Really.)
- 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves; cubed. I suppose you could also use a whole chicken, but I loathe dark meat, so I go with the breast. I'm a breast girl. Wait...anyway, moving on..
- 1 cup carrots; sliced, diced, or whatever cut tickles your fancy
- 1 cup frozen green peas
- 1/2 cup sliced celery
- 1/3 cup butter
- 1/3 cup yellow or white onion; chopped
- 1/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 celery seed
- 32 oz chicken broth for boiling (reserve 1 3/4 cups for sauce)
- 2/3 cup milk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a pot, combine chicken, carrots, peas, and celery. Add the carton of chicken broth, cover and boil for 15 minutes. At this point, keep checking to make sure it doesn't boil over :o Remove from heat after 15 minutes, drain, (reserving your broth for the sauce) and set aside.
In a sauce pan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir the reserved chicken broth and milk in. Simmer over medium heat until thickened. Remove from heat, and add the chicken and veggie mixture. At this point, you can add more chicken broth if you want a little thinner consistency. Put one crust in a lightly greased dish. I use a large iron skillet, but any deep dish will work fine. Pour your filling into crust, and cover with top crust. Pinch sides of crust to seal it. Cut 2 or 3 slits in top crust for steam to escape. You may also slather (who thought of that term anyway?) the top crust with softened butter for a crispier, browner crust. Bake in oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Let sit and cool about 7 or 8 minutes before digging in!
Okay, here are the different things I've done with this recipe:
I have cubed the chicken, and also shredded it. Both ways are good, but cubed gives you more of a bite of chicken each time. Make sense? Just depends on your taste.
I usually cut my carrots on the diagonal. I also add one can of green beans (drained) and one can of corn (also drained) to the mix just before pouring it into the pie shell. I guess you could really add any veggies you like. Or leave out the ones you don't!
When I am sauteing my onion in butter, I also add 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic.
I do not use canned chicken broth. For anything. I make my own with bouillon cubes. I do this because I use the cubes for other things as well, so I always have them on hand, and it's very easy to make. Just boil one cup of water and one cube together, and that makes one cup of broth. When I make it for this recipe, I just add the cubes to the water first, boil them down, then add the chicken and veggies, and then boil for 15 minutes. And as I mentioned, I make my own pie crust. It really is easy. I promise. Someday, I'll post my recipe for that. And one last thing, sometimes, if it's just me and the girls eating, I will halve the mixture, and use part of it, then freeze the other part. It's really nice when you can just pull it out of the freezer and pour in into the pie crust and bake it! And one last, last thing, I have made this where I use 2 crusts, and I have made it just using a top crust. Both ways are good, but if you like crust, go with 2! Oh, ps. I also sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the top crust after I slather (there's that word again!) the butter on!
This is a really good recipe, and my whole family loves it!! You should definitely make it sometime! I've included some pictures of the one I made this week!
The creamy filling!
All done!! 