What’s better than a Thanksgiving dinner where you don’t have to cook? Returning home with a bag full of delicious leftovers so you can create another fabulous meal. A big thank you to my brother and his wife for hosting the holiday meal and for sharing their leftovers with me so I could make home-made chicken pot pie–one of my daughter’s favorite recipes.

The beauty of chicken pot pie is that you can toss all your Thanksgiving leftovers into this dish–green beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, gravy, corn pudding, stuffing, you name it–and it always turns out fabulous. That’s that mark of a good recipe. Here are the ingredients you’ll need to make chicken pot pie:

Ingredients:

1-2 cups de-boned chicken (or turkey)
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup carrots, peeled and sliced
1 cup potatoes, cubed (no peeling necessary)
1/4 – 1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups home-made gravy (canned will work, too) or chicken broth
1 1/2 cups half-and-half (or 3/4 cup cream plus 3/4 cup milk)
1/2 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon salt

In a large skillet, saute the celery, onions, carrots, and potatoes in butter until soft (about 10-15 minutes), stirring occasionally so the vegetables don’t brown. Stir in the flour, gravy or chicken broth, half-and-half, chicken or turkey pieces, poultry seasoning, and salt. Pour mixture into a greased baking dish. Top with a home-made pie pastry (recipe below). Don’t use a store-bought crust; it’s easy to make a home-made crust and it tastes so much better. Come on, you can do it; I’ll walk you through it.

Pie Pastry:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons ice water (avoid adding additional water)

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Cut in the shortening with a pastry cutter until the shortening pieces resemble small peas. Add ice water and stir to combine (use your hands if you prefer). Do not over mix, over work, or over stretch the dough when fitting it into the pan or it will shrink during baking and become tough. Form the dough into a ball and roll it between two sheets of waxed paper (this keeps your counters and roller clean and no additional flour is necessary). Fold the dough into quarters. Place on top of the baking dish; unfold. Turn raw edges under. Crimp edges between your thumb and fore fingers or use a fork.

Make at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the top crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling around the edges.

Doesn’t this look delish? You can see that I added leftover peas and corn pudding, too. Give this chicken pot pie recipe a try and let me know what you think.