Simple At Home

The weather is turning cooler and we can kick on the over some days now. This means we are venturing into things like casseroles and lies for the year to help warm the house on those cooler days. With sales less than great we are holding off on buying a lot until the sales in October kick in. This means we are mostly eating from our garden and pantry. That's what inspired these pantry pot pies. While I did make these small pot pies in these cute mini spring form pans I also used a casserole dish to make a bigger one to make sure we had enough to go around without me having to cook all day long. These use all pantry ingredients. while I did use butter from my freezer for the crust you can make your own pie crust using Crisco or any other shortening and make this entirely from pantry ingredients. What you need to make pantry Chicken Pot Pies Pie crust: 1 - 1/4 cup flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 stick cold butter 1/4 cup ice water Pie filling: 5 Chicken bouillon cubes 1 large can of chicken meat 1 can of vegetables of choice 1 can potatoes 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning 1 tablespoon minced onion teaspoon garlic powder 1 cup water 1 tablespoon flour How to make Pantry Chicken Pot Pies In a medium size pan dump all of your cans of food without draining and seasonings. Bring it a light boil to meld the flavors together and allow the bouillon cubes to dissolve into the mixture. While this heats you can start to make your homemade pie crust. In a bowl mix your flour salt, and sugar. Cut your butter stick up into small bits before cutting into your flour, salt, and sugar mixture. Add in your water slowly mixing and then roll out the crust lining your pans. Once your filling is nice and hot use the water and flour to make a slurry that can be added to the filling to turn the broth into a gravy. Pour your filling into your pie crusts and cut the edges of the crust rerolling to make a top crust or simply fold your crust over onto the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 25- 30 minutes until your crust is golden. What vegetables can you use in your chicken pot pie? In truth, you will notice that I used a can of corn in my chicken pot pie. This is by far not the normal vegetable choice for pot pies but this is the vegetable we have the most of in our house right now because the summer allowed us to get several cases of corn for only $5 at the local market. Seeing we are not trying to use up our stock before winter we decided to use what we have the most off. Why you should consider pantry meals Stocking our pantry stockpile is something very important to help lower food costs, protect your family from economic downturns, and sometimes just make life a bit easier. Many people do not like to stock canned food because they really do not know what to do with all of that food. By trying recipes like this you can grow more confident in knowing how to use your stocked pantry making it easier to feed your family when food gets low when most people would look in the pantry and think that they have run out of food. This year I would like to challenge you to try a few Pantry recipes and start stocking the ingredients to make them whenever you may want or need them. You can stock your pantry through home canning, sales at the store, or for those struggling food banks are a great source for canned goods that most really have no idea how to truly utilize. I personally remember a huge shelf at the top of the pantry as a kid full of canned goods we had no idea how to use that was given to us from the pantry that would have really helped my sister and I eat if we had the slighted idea what to do with the food. Knowing how to make a meal from your pantry is a valuable skill. Looking for more pantry meal ideas? Use canned ground beef or canned roast beef or leave the beef out entirely in this simple three-bean chili or this southwestern chili. for another canned chicken option try using canned chicken for a quick and easy chicken and dumplings.