Monday, January 3, 2011

Whole Wheat Chicken Pot Pies

Whole Wheat Chicken Pot Pies

When my sister and I were little my parents took a vacation and left us with relatives twice. The first time, they took a cruise with my grandparents and left us with our great aunt and uncle.

The second time was a trip to San Francisco when they left us with our grandparents. I don't remember much about that week — except for the food.

One of the meals my mom planned for the week was a pot pie casserole. She used to make it at least once a month and thought it would be simple enough for my grandma to assemble.

The filling was pretty standard — chicken, carrots, onion, peas in a gravy — but instead of making a biscuit top she'd dollop the casserole with refrigerated biscuit dough. I was never a huge fan of it.

To make matters worse, my grandma burned the biscuits. They were almost black. Of course, my Gram tried to convince us it was just a "just a little brown, but still edible" until my grandpa agreed with us — they were definitely burnt. Unfortunately, that didn't stop her from trying to force us to eat the burned biscuits.

I've never really like pot pie since.

Today, I was flipping through the Clean Eating Magazine cookbook when I found these chicken pot pies and decided to give pot pie a second chance.

Like most Clean Eating recipes, this one needed a few tweaks. For one, the dough was way too sticky to form into biscuits. I even added more flour. Eventually, I gave up and just spread the dough over the ramekin.

I also added to add dissolve corn starch in a little water at it to the chicken mixture. The flour added at the end did not thicken it up much. It was really soupy and I prefer my filling to be thicker like a gravy.

Lastly, if I would make it again, I would use 1/2 all-purpose flour and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour. The whole wheat flour is very nutty tasting, and I thought it was a bit too strong in this case. This change wouldn't make it "clean" exactly, but it would still be a healthier chicken pot pie.

Overall, not a bad start to 2011.

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