Leftovers Can Be Better Than The Original

Spring weather always amuses me. Once day it's chilly, blustery, perhaps raining, and the next day the breeze is mild, the sun is shining and the sky is a dreamy blue...until late in the afternoon when the clouds roll in! It's like a toddler who can't make up it's mind if it should be sweet or throw a tantrum. Today we had sleet, sun, hail and rain. Kinda fun actually.

So what do we eat when the weather is like that? One night it's chicken grilled simply on the Weber and the next night when it's rainy and cold, it's leftover chicken baked into a comfort food pot pie.

It helps that I had ready made pie crust in the fridge, plenty of veggies in the crisper, freezer and pantry, and a can of chicken broth close at hand, plus lots of dried herbs. A quick boil of the red potatoes in broth, sauté of chopped onion, celery, carrot and garlic in some olive oil and you're half way done. 

The leftover chicken was cut into bite sized pieces, the herbs and seasonings added to the sautéed veggies, then some flour cooked with them and it was time to preheat the oven. Potatoes were tender, so they were caught by the colander while the broth was caught in a bowl beneath.  The broth added to the flour/veggie mixture and stirred vigorously became a delightful gravy. In went the cooked potatoes, the cut up chicken, and some peas that had been microwaved briefly by Sweetie. Mix it all together, top with a vented thin pie crust, tuck in the edges of the crust and into the oven (425 degrees F) it went for about 20 minutes until the crust was brown and the filling bubbly. 

I used my cast iron skillet for the sautéing, the gravy making and the container for the filling mixture, so it was the easiest thing to top the skillet with the crust and put it in the oven. You can also transfer the filling mixture to a pie plate or casserole and top it with the unbaked crust.

This made dinner for two nights and was soooo good! If you'd like to make it yourself, the recipe is HERE, although I did leave out the bell pepper and the milk and I used pie dough instead of puff pastry. You could make either one with leftover chicken and I know you will be delighted with the resulting meal.