Bringing inspiration and ideas to better manage your home kitchen
If your goal is to create a rich, deeply flavorful soup, know that a soup is only as good as it’s broth. Broth can be made in advance and stored in the freezer to make soup a quick and convenient weeknight meal. But a good …
If I could be great at making two things, it’d be a richly flavorful, brothy soup and a whole roasted chicken. Simple dishes done extraordinarily well are my ambition in the kitchen. The extraordinary is hard to see – it’s not pompous or fancy. Instead, …
To set the stage on this post, it requires a confession. One of my favorite guilty pleasures as a kid was those cheap premade chicken pot pies you’d find in the freezer section. To be completely honest, the frozen food section has never tempted me – as an adult or a child. With of course the exception of ice cream. While the freezer often held Costco frozen food items during our teen years, my mom was always cooking meals. We didn’t rely on this stuff for dinners, so I never really grew to like it.
Chicken pot pie recipes (whether tried at home or ordered on restaurant menus) were mostly a disappointment. A creamy bowl of chicken soup with a square of puff pastry should never be called a chicken pot pie. A proper chicken pot pie is a savory pie. Think of a delicious apple pie turned savory. You don’t throw a little puff pastry atop a bowl of sugared apples and call it a pie. A proper pie requires a bottom pie crust and a top pie crust. The crust ingredients should be simple – flour, water, and lots of butter. The filling of a chicken pot pie can be brothy or creamy, but it does need to be thick so that it can be served without running across your entire plate.
I haven’t attempted many chicken pot pie recipes, primarily just because a proper pie recipe is few and far between. Cold weather and our decision to eliminate sugar were the motivators to go searching. It you can’t have a sweet pie, you may as well have a savory one!
I didn’t expect much of this recipe, mostly because we had adapted it to be gluten free, but it was a hit and one we’ll keep to put on repeat during the colder months of the year. The crust was delicious, the filling was easy to make, flavorful and held up as pie filling. It was the perfect Sunday dinner to prepare for the week ahead.
If your idea of good chicken pot pie revolves around a true double-crust pie complete with a savory filling that's thick enough to hold up to slicing, this is it!
First, make the pie crust by combining flour and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Cut in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until the butter is the size of small peas. Slowly add milk until the dough just starts to come together. Divide the dough into two pieces and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 425F. If you're using gluten free flour, it's a bit more challenging to roll out the crusts without cracking into lots of pieces. I found that rolling each crust between two sheets of parchment paper. Once the dough is rolled out to size, fit and trim the bottom crust in the pie pan and return to refrigerator.
Next, start the filling by sauteing onions and carrots with the butter. Once they're tender but still firm, add the flour, salt and pepper. Stir to combine and toast the flour until slightly golden. Next add the chicken broth and stir to combine. Next add the milk, peas, and cooked chicken. Simmer the filling until thick and remove from the heat.
Add the filling to the pie pan atop the pie crust and then fit the top crust over the filling, sealing the top and bottom crusts and crimping the edge. Cut slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Cool for 15 minutes before serving.
Inspired By: Gluten Free Palate
Gluten Free Flour Option: I used King Arthur's Gluten Free Measure for Measure Flour and was happy with the result.
It’s the week of Thanksgiving! In the US, this is a holiday full of tradition. Most people have some expectation of what thanksgiving dinner looks like. We all have memories and experiences that are fun to repeat each year. It’s the one day a year …
In most cookbooks or food blogs, you’ll find a list of “must have” tools and utensils. These are really helpful if you’re getting started. If you’re already a home cook, chances are high that you’ve discovered the tools that you need, based on what you …
We’re a couple weeks into a 90-day gluten free and very limited added sugar protocol. We’ve been working on our gut health and this is what was recommended for both of us based on lab work. Our functional medicine practitioner/RN shared that we don’t want to cheat, even one instance of gluten sets us back to square one, so it’s critical that we know what’s in the food we’re eating. I’ve never intentionally eaten a gluten free diet so wasn’t sure how difficult it’d be. With the exception of jumping into this over the holidays, it’s honestly been a breeze. The no added sugar part is much more difficult. We can have fruit but no other sugar other than in really small amounts to sweeten recipes (a tablespoon here or there for oatmeal, vinaigrettes, sauces, etc.)
This isn’t a post touting a gluten free diet. However, if you find yourself on one, hopefully this will provide you with meal ideas! When you’re eliminating certain food or restricting your diet in any way, sometimes you just need inspiration for new menu ideas!
When going gluten free, you must avoid anything with wheat or wheat flour, including:
Alternative options that are ok to eat include:
Things we’ve been making:
If you go out to eat, you want to be careful. It’s important that you know what you’re eating and that’s hard when someone else is making the food for you! Places / food types that can be safe:
Chips and salsa. One of the best food combinations out there. Thinking of them immediately conjures up memories of summer vacations near a lake or near a pool. Warm weather, light lunches that consist of snack type foods like this. It seems that salsa shines …
This recipe is inspired by a breakfast dish at a local diner. Breakfast diners (aka “greasy spoons”) are as valuable to have in your neighborhood as a local dive bar, tavern or pub that serves food. I’ve noticed both have become more and more difficult …
Shepherd’s pie is such a great recipe to have in your toolkit. I love it because it’s composed of ingredients that I almost always have on hand. It’s a meal I can pull together even if I didn’t plan it for the week. As much as I love and rely on meal planning, there are weeks where we’re between vacations or weekend adventures where meal planning doesn’t happen. In these weeks, I rely on my pantry staples to put something on the table. This is a recipe that does just that. It requires little preparation and is one that most people would be happy eating. Pair it with a glass of red wine and now it’s an adult meal.
Shepherd’s pie is technically made with ground lamb and cottage pie is made with ground beef. I hesitate to call this cottage pie because most of us think of it as Shepherd’s pie. But nonetheless, now you know. This dish originated in Great Britain and Ireland in early 1800’s. It became popular because it was simple, comforting, and a practical way to stretch ingredients.
A classic recipe of humble ingredients that comforts and satisfies when the weather is a bit colder outside.
First start the potatoes by placing the chopped potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and cook until tender (12-15 minutes). Drain and mash the potatoes in the same pot. Add the cream and the salt and mash until smooth. Then add the egg and parmesan cheese and stir to combine.
While the potatoes are cooking, preheat the oven to 400F and heat a large skilled over medium heat. Add the olive oil and ground beef, season with salt and pepper and cook until it's no longer pink. Add the onions and sauté for 3 minutes and then garlic and sauté for another minute.
Next add the flour and stir to combine. Then stir in the wine, deglazing the pan for a minute or two. Add the broth, tomato paste, and Worcestershire. Stir to combine. Then add the vegetables along with more seasoning. Reduce heat, cover and cook until the sauce has slightly thickened and the vegetables are tender (about 10 minutes).
Transfer the meat to a pie dish or 11 x 7 casserole dish. Add the mash potatoes to the top by scooping a large spoonful at a time and covering the entire top with the spoonfuls. This makes it easier to spread the mashed potatoes atop the meat filling. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the potatoes are golden. Top with chopped chives and serve!
Inspired by: Natasha's Kitchen
Fall and Winter bring long-held family traditions of bird hunting. My dad grew up bird hunting with his dad, and my brother and I grew up doing the same with him. Since I was in grade school, I can remember October trips to central & …