Chicken Pot Pie (GF)

Probably if you eat gluten, you are sick of all these gluten free recipes.  Sorry not sorry. Ha.  My next one will be less specific to the GF population.  This recipe is the last one I had marked to make from the Hiebert's GF cookbook I got at the Amish store.  So even though it's very (very) similar to the Chicken and Biscuits that I posted last week, I wanted to just finish up this cookbook.  So I made these pretty close together, when normally I would have waited like a month or something.

Even when I was eating gluten, I wouldn't make my own pie crust, because I wasn't good at rolling it out.  Or mixing it either.  But prepared GF pie crusts are few and far between.  And also I thought...well, I'll just try it.  And if it is a fail, I will just put biscuits on top like last week haha.

Chicken Pot Pie (GF)
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrots
½ cup chopped red pepper
¼ cup melted butter
½ cup rice flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup milk or cream (I use Lactaid milk when recipes call for milk)
2 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
4 cups chopped cooked chicken
Pastry Dough:
1 ¼ cups brown rice flour
1 cup tapioca starch
½ tbsp sugar
½ tsp baking soda
2 tsp xanthan gum
½ tsp salt
¾ cup shortening
¼ cup milk

Preheat oven to 400.  Saute vegetables in butter for 10 minutes. 

Add rice flour to vegetables and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. 

Add broth and milk to vegetables, stirring constantly until thick and bubbly.  Stir in salt and pepper. 

Add chicken, stirring well. 

Scrape mixture into greased 9x13 baking dish.

For pastry, sift together dry ingredients into bowl.  Add shortening and mix until texture of bread crumbs.  Add milk gradually, testing texture.  Dough should pull together into a nice ball (add more milk if necessary).  Chill for 1 hour if dough is too soft to handle.  Roll dough out into 9x13 rectangle on plastic wrap or pastry mat.  Lifting corners of plastic wrap or pastry mat, invert dough onto chicken mixture in prepared dish.  Cut several slits into top of dough.

Bake 40 minutes, checking after 20 minutes.  Cover with foil if browning too quickly.

So at first glance, it's browner than I would like it to be.  But then I thought maybe it's the brown rice flour...browning?  I don't know.  It didn't taste over-done.  Here's how it looked on our plates (ignore my probiotic in the corner haha):

Usually I prefer a top and bottom crust on my pot pie, but in this case I think it would have been too much.  The crust was kind of thick, so one was enough.  Also this crust has shortening, which many people think is evil.  I think it's ok sometimes but you shouldn't eat it every day.  Everything in moderation.  Including moderation..........just kidding.  The younger kids did not enjoy this crust, but Steve, Sam and I all liked it.  And 2 of the people had seconds.  I took a serving to work the next day for lunch, and it wasn't quite as good the second day (the crust, I mean...the filling was still great).

So, we'll have this again.  The crust wasn't the easiest thing to roll out, but I have had things go far worse than this. 

And...another cookbook for the archives :)  I always like when I finish one.