FOR ME, FEW THINGS EVOKE THE IDEA OF COMFORT FOOD more easily than chicken pot pie. Even as a kid, I remember my mother buying those frozen individual pot pies (was it Swanson’s brand?); we simply called them little meat pies. There was something about having a whole pie of your own, and having a choice of flavors, that always appealed to me. Cutting into the crust with a fork, being careful not to burn yourself as the first cloud of delicious steam burst out, knowing that it was too hot to eat and waiting impatiently as the fragrant gravy seeped out ingratiatingly around the edges of the crust .... Oh, I’m sorry, I was just reminiscing.
Anyway, I love pot pies. Of course, they usually have potatoes tucked inside, and I love anything with potatoes on principle. I seem to go through occasional phases with food. Sometimes all I feel like eating is anything wrapped up in a warm flour tortilla. Other times it’s anything spooned generously over a bed of brown basmati rice. Even so, there’s nothing quite like the combination of hot meat, vegetables and gravy sealed up enticingly inside a flaky, crispy brown edible container. Carrots, peas, potatoes, onions, garlic, lots of dark meat. (I’ve always preferred the dark meat of poultry, and I don’t entirely understand all the emphasis on white meat. With both chicken and turkey, my favorite part is always the dark, succulent thigh.) Meat and vegetables swimming deliriously in a generous pool of thick rich gravy, oh boy! My mother used to use a paring knife to scratch initials in the unbaked top crust of little meat pies to identify them: B for beef, T for turkey and so on.
There are lots of good recipes for pot pies around, from the Internet to your grandmother’s recipe box. Here are two easy pie crust recipes and a basic formula for a chicken or turkey pot pie.
Hot-water Pastry
(makes one 9-inch double crust)
⅓ cup boiling water
⅔ cup shortening or lard
2 cups flour
¾ teaspoon salt
Mix together and form dough into a ball before rolling out. For gluten-free pastry, replace the flour with 2 cups of a gluten-free baking mix such as Manini’s (see Appendix B) or use the following recipe.
Gluten-free Pastry
(makes one 9-inch double crust)
1½ cups rice flour
½ cup potato starch flour
¼ cup tapioca flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
¾ cup shortening or lard
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons cold water
Sift dry ingredients together into mixing bowl. Cut in shortening or lard.
Blend remaining ingredients together in separate bowl.
Stir egg mixture into flour mixture until blended. The mixture will seem quite moist, but this moisture is necessary when using rice flour.
Knead dough until it forms a ball. Divide it into two balls and roll out between two sheets of plastic wrap to desired size. To place in pie pan, remove top sheet of plastic wrap. Using the bottom sheet for ease of handling, invert the dough and drop it into the pan, shaping it into the curves of the pan before removing the remaining plastic wrap.
For later use, bake at 450°F for 10 to 12 minutes.
Chicken or Turkey Pot Pie
1 recipe pie crust dough (above)
1 recipe chicken or turkey gravy (below)
Cooked chicken or turkey meat, about a pound, boned and cut into cubes of a size you like
1 large onion, diced (not too small)
3 large carrots, peeled or not, cut into chunks
3 stalks of celery, including leaves, washed and sliced into smallish pieces
1 small bag frozen peas (or a can or pint-size Mason jar of canned peas, drained well)
Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large mixing bowl, toss meat and vegetables together. Pour hot gravy over the mixture and stir gently with a wooden spoon, just enough to coat everything. Roll out half the pie dough and place in a deep 9-inch pie pan. Pile meat mixture into pie pan; the filling will shrink a bit while cooking, so don’t worry too much if it seems like a huge mound. Roll out the second half of the dough and lay it carefully on top of the filling. Seal the top and bottom crusts together at the edges. Cut a few slits in the top crust with a sharp paring knife, to let steam escape. Put pie in oven; it’s a good idea to put a cookie sheet on a rack under the pie, just in case the gravy bubbles over. Check on it after about 45 minutes. The pie is done when the edges of the crust are nicely browned and the gravy is bubbling up through the slits in the top crust. Let cool slightly before serving.
Basic Chicken or Turkey Gravy
1 stick (½ cup) butter (please, don’t use margarine for this!)
½ cup flour (all-purpose flour, half whole wheat flour or gluten-free baking mix)
Pinch of nutmeg
Two pinches of dry thyme leaf
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Small handful of chopped fresh parsley
4 cups (1 quart) chicken or turkey stock, preferably homemade (don’t bother skimming the fat off the top; there’s not that much of it, and you’ll notice if it isn’t there)
In a 2-quart saucepan, melt the butter over low heat; do not brown it. With a wooden spoon, stir in the flour, nutmeg and thyme, blending well. Stir for another minute or so, then gradually add the chicken or turkey stock, stirring constantly. A whisk works well to blend the stock with the roux. Continue stirring until the roux is completely incorporated into the stock; if you see any lumps, keep stirring. You still have it on low heat, right?
Stir mixture every few minutes, or constantly, if you’re worried it will scorch. It will start to thicken in a few minutes and bubble a little. You definitely want to keep stirring it at this point. When the gravy is bubbling all over, turn off the heat; if your stove is electric, move the pan off the burner. Adjust seasoning to taste with sea salt and pepper. A little Tamari soy sauce (really, just a little) is a good addition, too.
Canning Chicken and Turkey Meat and Stock
Sit back and relax. I don’t suppose you’ll be surprised to know I have a lot to say on this subject.
I love canning. I first learned the basics of canning when I was in ninth grade. At our high school, Home Economics was required for girls in ninth grade; boys had Wood Shop, which I thought was unfair. Actually, at one point that year, the boys and girls switched places: boys had Home Ec, girls had Shop, for two weeks, if I remember right.
I didn’t particularly enjoy Home Ec. Sewing was the only part I actually disliked, probably because I wasn’t interested in it then and wasn’t any good at it. A great deal of Home Ec was naturally about cooking. I found most of it frankly boring, as I had started to learn to cook when quite young. I already knew how to boil pasta. That same year, my mother had started making bread, and I was in the process of learning that useful skill from her. Mrs. Jones gave me a D for my apple pie, claiming I had not followed the recipe. It’s true that I had used about twice as much cinnamon than the recipe called for, but I was taking the pie home, and presumably I was going to eat some of it, and I happen to like lots of cinnamon in apple pie. I should have gotten extra credit for boldness and creativity. Obviously Mrs. Jones had no imagination.
I never did understand why we made a Baked Alaska in that class, for heaven’s sake. How many Baked Alaskas do you think I’ve made in all the years since ninth grade? Uh, let me think ... oh, that’s right: none.
I did, however, learn the fundamentals of canning in Home Ec, for which I am grateful to this day. Certainly I’ve gained much knowledge and practical experience with food preservation since then, but that’s where it began for me. All through high school, I helped my mother with many different kinds of canning chores: pears, peaches, raspberry and strawberry jam, bread-and-butter pickles, marinara sauce, dill pickles, probably a few kinds of jelly and other things I’ve forgotten.
A few years back, I had the opportunity, through our local county extension office, to participate in an intensive Master Food Preserver program. In spite of my years of canning experience, I tell you, I learned a lot. Not just about canning, either. The course covered freezing and dehydrating as well. Incidentally, it was where I learned the actual purpose of blanching green beans to prepare them for freezing, something I had always done but without knowing why. There is an enzyme in vegetables that, left to its own devices, sets in motion the decomposition process right after harvesting. Blanching in boiling water for the specified time (usually just a few minutes) deactivates this enzyme. And here I thought it was just to bring out the pretty green color of my Romano beans. Blush.
Up until about ten or twelve years ago, I had never used a pressure canner. Pickles and jams and most fruits and tomatoes are classed as high-acid foods, and as such they are safe to process in a boiling-water bath. Vegetable like green beans and beets, however, unless they are pickled, are low-acid foods. Meats and foods containing meat (such as chili or spaghetti sauce) are also low-acid foods, and must be processed in a pressure canner.
This point cannot be over-emphasized. Get yourself a good up-to-date canning book (see the recommendations in Appendix B); it will have charts that show clearly which foods may be safely processed in a boiling-water bath and which require the use of a pressure canner.
Over the years, and also during the Master Food Preserver course, I have heard many stories, horror stories actually, about frightening mishaps with pressure canners. Almost everyone I’ve ever talked to about pressure canners seems somewhat afraid to use them. Considering these stories, I can understand this. At the same time, it is such an essential tool in my food-preservation arsenal that I want to encourage you to read on, and keep an open mind on the subject.
I am fairly certain that virtually all of the pressure canner accidents and mishaps I’ve ever heard about were caused by operator error. Because of the buildup of pressure and high temperatures (at ten pounds pressure, it is 240°F), there is a danger of potentially severe injury from burns or flying objects if a pressure canner is used incorrectly. I have to admit to being very nervous the first several times I used my new pressure canner. I sat in a chair at what I hoped was a safe distance away, but close enough to see the pressure gauge. User’s manual in hand, I read and reread the instructions, looking up at the pressure canner every couple of minutes, going over in my head the sequence of events:
Jars in the canner, lids on with rings snug but not tight, three quarts of hot water. Check to make sure the lid is locked in place. Bring it to a boil, and when the steam is coming rapidly out of the steam vent, set the timer for ten minutes. When ten minutes are up, put the weight on the steam vent. Now keep an eye on the pressure gauge, since the pressure is going to start to build.
Once the required pressure is reached, I set the timer for the length of time required for processing. At this point, I need to start gradually turning down the heat, or the pressure will keep going up. I use a gas stove, so it’s easy to gradually turn down the heat. I learned the hard way not to turn it down from high to low all at once; if the pressure drops below the required level, you will have to turn it back up and start timing all over again once the correct pressure is reached.
Compared to using a boiling-water bath, processing times with a pressure canner can be quite lengthy. For example, when I process cooked chicken meat, pint jars require seventy-five minutes. Chicken stock is faster, processing for thirty minutes for quarts.
I always have to remind myself that processing times must be adjusted when you are more than a thousand feet above sea level because the boiling point of water goes down as pressure increases with elevation. My kitchen is at almost exactly a thousand feet. My book says to add five minutes of processing time between one thousand and three thousand feet. Sure, I could probably get away with skipping the extra time; for all I know, the top of my stove is a little below a thousand feet. But we’re talking food safety here, so why take the chance?
Please note that this description above of my pressure-canning process is simply a brief rundown of the steps involved. It is not intended as a substitute for reading and following the instructions with your pressure canner! Please, read and save those instructions and refer to them every time you use it to process food.
I don’t know about you, but I use my pressure canner year-round. You’d think I could skip looking at the instructions; after all, I must know them by heart by now. Well, to some extent this is true, but I have long since been in the habit of looking up the processing times for chicken or chili or whatever, every single time. It is too easy to get confused between processing times for pints or quarts, or between raw-pack and hot-pack or whatever. It only takes a minute to check the charts, and I have the peace of mind of knowing that I have done all I can to ensure the safety of my processed food. Also, going over and over the instructions will increase your self-confidence, not something to be overlooked when using a potentially dangerous piece of equipment.
Wondering why I don’t simply freeze my chicken or turkey or chicken stock? Well, first of all, we don’t have a large freezer. Our small propane refrigerator/freezer has a total of eight cubic feet of space; about one cubic foot is the freezer. Propane freezers, like refrigerators, are much more expensive than electric ones, and honestly, I don’t know where I would put a chest freezer anyway. I also heard plenty of stories in the master food preserver class about food lost in the depths of chest freezers, only to be found a year or two or three later and thrown away.
For me, though, the best thing about canning as opposed to freezing food is that I never have to thaw anything before using. It’s so quick and easy to grab a jar of minestrone or spaghetti sauce or smoked tuna off the shelf, pop the lid and heat it up. Especially during the short days of winter, when daylight time is at a premium for getting outdoor chores done, it helps greatly to be able to put a delicious hot meal on the table in just a few minutes.