Chicken and Biscuits Recipe

I LOVE chicken pot pie! Seriously love! I remember the first time I went to a Marie Calendar's restaurant and got one of their amazing pies with the perfectly flaky crust and rich chicken and veggie filling. Oh yum! When Nik and I got married his mom gave me a pot pie recipe that I made regularly. It was one of our favorite dishes, always served with tons of cold cottage cheese. Now that we are gluten and dairy free that meal is a distant memory for sure. However I have made lots of variations through the years to try to keep it alive in some form. I have tried several gluten free crusts but none were real winners, and I wasn't crazy about the ingredients anyway. In the last few years I have opted to just make a pot pie filling and serve with biscuits. Now that we are trying to do less grains, I have been making the biscuits out of coconut flour. They are pretty sweet so the flavor is a bit different than traditional biscuits, but they are still really tasty.

Now in the past this dish has not been the biggest hit with my kids. I was always so surprised that they didn't love it! I remember always being such a fan as a kid. I think the big issue was that they prefer not to have their food all mixed together. When I made this a couple of days ago it was the first time they seemed to enjoy it. Finally!

I am going to be really honest - this is not the quickest of meals to make. Nothing about it is too tricky or complicated, but it involves a lot of cutting and chopping and a few different pots. As I look over the recipe I keep feeling like it shouldn't take so long, but every time I make it it ends up being a little more involved than I thought it would be. Part of it is that pulling all of the chicken off of the bone and cutting it up is really time consuming. So this is not something I make too often. This week I made a bigger amount and we had this two nights in a row to make all of the work worth it.

Last thing to mention before getting to this recipe - from the picture it looks really potato-heavy and lacking in chicken. We were half way through dinner when I remembered to take a picture. My son had the fullest and neatest plate so I took a picture of his meal, but he had already eaten most of his chicken. So the picture isn't super accurate :).

Chicken Pot Pie Filling with Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 1 Whole Chicken, cooked, meat removed and cut up (I have the butcher cut up the chicken into 8 pieces for me) - I cook mine at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.
• 8 medium-sized carrots, sliced
• 4 large red potatoes
• 3 stalks celery, sliced
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 4 Tbsp butter or palm oil
• 2-3 C frozen peas
• 2 C chicken stock
• 2 Tbsp thickener (I used arrowroot starch, but you could use any flour or starch)
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 2 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 tsp pepper (or to taste)

Directions: 

1. Steam the carrots and potatoes in a large pot until fork tender. For me this takes about 20-30 mins, depending on how small I cut the veggies.
2. While the carrots/potatoes are steaming, melt butter or palm oil in a large stock pot. Add onion, celery and garlic and saute until tender. Add the thyme.
3. Once the potatoes and carrots are done add to the onion mixture. Add the frozen peas as well.
4. Mix the thickener in with the chicken stock and stir to incorporate it completely. Then add the stock to the stock pot. Bring to a soft boil and then reduce heat slightly, stirring until thickened. 
5. Now add the salt and pepper to taste. 
6. Serve over biscuits of your choice. Here is the recipe I used. I made the recipe times 1 1/2 to make enough biscuits for two nights. (You will have to scroll down the page to find the biscuit recipe. I feel like these are way to sweet so I cut the honey in half.)