Pot Pie Perfection

For a little over a month, my husband and I didn't have jobs, so things were a little tight. One day I was hunting through my kitchen to find something to make for dinner. After doing some searching and deciding that cereal wasn't gonna cut it, I had 2 chicken breasts, some frozen mixed vegetables, and bisquick in my hands, ready to make something like a pot pie.

So I began searching through my recipe books for inspiration. I found one recipe that required boiling onions, celery, carrots and other vegetables with the chicken to make a broth. I had some garlic and baby carrots, so that would have to do. Then I ran into a problem, all the recipes I had (I ended looking at about 4 different chicken pot pie recipes while I made mine) said to use a whole chicken to make the broth, then take out the bones and all that. I only had chicken breasts. So I did some internet searching and decided I could still make the broth with the chicken breasts.

I set about making my broth. Simmer water, chicken, carrots, garlic, half a buillon cube, pepper and some rosemary for an hour and voila! Broth! After about 20 minutes, I took the chicken out and cut it into pieces so that it wouldn't get too dry. This was my mom's advice. I called her to ask about making the broth and she said that she always cuts up her chicken because it absorbs more moisure that way.

When the broth was done, I added the frozen vegetables and mixed in flour and water to thicken it. One of my recipe books called for sour cream, so I threw in a dollop of that for added creaminess. Here is a picture of the filling:


Now for the topping. 3 of my recipe books called for a pie crust topping. That would be easy, except I didn't have any shortening or butter to make the crust, so scratch that. And here's where the bisquick came in. With the inspiration of my husband, I decided to make the roll-out biscuits on the box and use those as the topping. We were having fun and decided to cut the biscuits with a flower cookie cutter, here's how that turned out:


Not quite as pretty as we imagined lol but it worked. Then we had some leftover dough, so we made some pumpkin-shaped biscuits to go with our theme:


I only had to bake the pot pie for about 8 minutes and it was golden brown and ready to eat! And I am happy to say that it was delicious! Here is the finished product:


We made the pot pie another time and decided to do a lattice top with the bisquick, it turned out pretty nice:


The second time I made the chicken broth I cut up the chicken before putting it in the water. I was quite surprised when I opened up the lid and found that there was hardly any liquid left! I guess my mom was right, when you cut the chicken, it absorbs more moisture. The difference was that the first time I cut it up about 20 minutes into the simmering process, instead of right away. Needless to say, I added some water and a buillon cube to save my pot pie and it turned out just fine!

I have to say that it was pretty fun to mix several recipes together to accomodate the ingredients that I had. I made my first broth/stock and boy did it smell delicious!