We love chicken pot pie but I’ve never been 100% happy with the ones I make. Last week I was watching Homesteading Family and came across her pot pie video/blog post. I knew that was the next thing I was going to freeze dry so I had taken two big packages of frozeen boneless, skinless chicken breasts out of the freezer. As soon as the breakfast dishes were cleaned up, I got started.
This recipe is just so easy, I kept thinking surely I was missing something but I wasn’t. We had it for dinner last night and it was delicious.
I knew there would be more chicken than I needed for the pot pies but I went ahead and cut it all up and browned it, fully cooked it actually, and filled one tray with the extra chicken. I’ll freeze dry that and can rehydrate it and use it for chicken salad, chicken and dumplings or on the days I’m feeling especially lazy, I can add BBQ sauce and make sandwiches with pickles and cole slaw.
I followed the recipe exactly and didn’t need to change anything.
The recipe made enough to fill two trays plus the container we were having for dinner. Based on the amount we ate for dinner, each freeze dryer tray will be enough for four meals for the two of us so that’s 8 meals in the trays plus the one we had last night. It wasn’t that much work for 9 meals!
I made the pie crust and cut it into strips.
When freeze drying, oil is the enemy. It will go rancid within a fairly short amount of time. Carolyn, in the video, added the pie crust to her jars of meat mixture but I’m going to vacuum seal all the pie crust strips in a half gallon jar and, even though it’s freeze dried, I’m going to store it in the freezer. Since there’s a chance of the crust going rancid, I don’t want it mixed in with the other ingredients.
No matter what the pie crust does, this is probably not a recipe I’d expect to store more than a few years – not one of the 20+ year storage foods. Nine meals worth will be gone by the end of 2023 so no need to worry about long term storage.
If you’d like to make this recipe and have no interest in freeze drying or canning it, you can easily divide it up and freeze it, preferably vacuum sealing it in bags, then defrosting and baking when you’re ready to serve it.