recipes: a quick chicken pot pie

Quick Chicken Pot Pie (photo: mine)

We've started going to a late Sunday afternoon worship service, and that leads to late dinners. So, I've been trying out some crock pot recipes that would be ready or need minimal prep when we get home. I pulled this recipe together from several others I found on the interent and our family loves it—maybe yours will too:

2 cans cooked chicken breast (14.5 ounces each)

1 can chicken gravy

1 can cream of chicken soup

½ cup of peas (frozen or canned)

½ cup of corn (frozen or canned)

½ cup chopped carrots

1 cup of chopped potatoes (about one potato)

1 roll of Pillsbury (or any other brand) thin crust pizza dough

Combine all the ingredients except the pizza dough into the crock pot and cook on high for three hours. Divide the mixture into two 9 inch pie pans. Unroll the pizza dough and divide in half; stretch and mold the dough over the top of the mixture so the edges touch the sides of each pie pan but don’t go over it. Brush the dough with olive oil or spray with olive oil cooking spray, and then sprinkle salt, pepper and a little dried basil on top. Bake at the temperature and time as directed on the pizza dough package (Pillsbury directs oven temp at 400F and I baked mine until the dough started to brown; see picture above). Remove from the oven and let sit for about 10 minutes—then cut, scoop and serve!

If you are not a fan of canned chicken, you could substitute chicken breasts. In that case, I would place the breasts in the crock pot with the gravy and soup and cook on low for a couple of hours, then add the vegetables and let cook another three. Also, you can use a number of different crusts (see the recipes below) but I chose the pizza dough because it is lower in calories. You can also use a variety of vegetables in this recipe; I am going to add broccoli the next time I make it. You could also skip the crock pot entirely, cooking the mixture on the stove until the vegetables are tender or use precooked vegetables and skip the warming process, allowing the mixture to warm in the oven as the dough bakes.

There is an endless variety of ways to make this recipe—here are the few that I drew from to create the one above: the Crockpot Girls’ Crockpot Chicken Pot Pie, Crock Pot Chicken Pot Pie from Make Life Delicious, Individual Pot Pies from Quick Dish, and Lighter Chicken Pot Pie from EAD Living.