Recipe for Matthew

 

These pies were made with turkey Ralph bought me last Thanksgiving
It was still okay after being frozen for a year, but not as juicy and tasty as it might have been.
Made great pies though!

As requested:

Poultry Pies

Sauté 4 stalks of celery and two large cloves of garlic in oil of your choice. I use butter because…butter! It’s better!

When celery is somewhere near done add 4 or 5 chicken thighs, or maybe four cups or so of cut up leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

Season to taste. I use generous amounts of lemon pepper blend, Italian seasoning, Mrs. Dash seasoning, a tiny dusting of onion powder, and same of sage. Also half a teaspoon of our homemade paprika. You can use whatever you like. Since we don’t add salt, we are not afraid to toss in a bunch of flavorings.

I cook the thighs until they are mostly done, then use scissors to cut them into comfortably bite-sized pieces and finish cooking them through.

Taste a bit. Add more seasonings if needed.

While this is going on I prepare the vegetables. This is another place where personal taste comes in. Generally I prepare two packages of steam in the bag California blend and add them when most of the other ingredients are cooked. However, sometimes we add cooked  peas, frozen or canned, fresh carrots if we have them, fresh broccoli if there happens to be some in the fridge. Pretty much anything will blend nicely. I’d like to try some turnips or rutabagas. Leftovers are good...

Add the veggies and a couple/three cans of cream of mushroom soup. We buy no-salt-added if we can find it, but regular works too. Heat it all up together and taste again. Add seasonings if needed. By this point it should taste really good.

Divide the stuff into two pie crusts, 10 inch I think, cover it with another crust, crimp and pierce as needed and bake until the crust is good and brown in a 350 degree oven.

One pie feeds three of us two hearty meals and you could stretch it to feed two meals to four people if you needed to, but I have to warn you. It is really tasty and you might not want to share.

I usually cover the extra pie with tight foil and freeze for the next time we want it. 

You could easily adapt this recipe to beef, pork or venison. I love having  a nice pie waiting for a cold night when we are all hungry and nobody wants to cook. We really like them a lot.