Making Chicken Pot Pie... Healthy

Now that it's coming to the end of summer (actually, it's more like me day dreaming about fall), I've been craving yummy fall and winter comfort food.  I don't know about you, but chicken pot pie falls under the comfort food category for me. But eating comfort food everyday isn't realistic for staying slim, right? Wrong! I made over my family's chicken pot pie, and made it into something that you can eat weekly! I'm sure you can eat it daily too, but what fun is that?

I didn't see the reason to make a big pie, considering I would be the only one eating it. So I came up with a single serving recipe, in which I used a 5 inch wide souffle (ramekin, corning ware, etc) dish. To cut calories I used vegetable spread in place of butter, and cut out the bottom crust, only using the crust to cover the top.

Onto the recipe!

Ingredients

Pie Crust

4 tbsp flour

1 tbsp vegetable spread (i.e. I can't believe it's not butter), roughly 50 calories per TBSP

1 tsp cold Water

Filling

 chicken breast (I used about 3 and a half ounce of chicken)

1 cup water (you may need to add or take, depending on how much liquid you want)

1 small potato, diced

1 carrot, sliced

1 celery, sliced

1 tbsp diced onion

Thickener
Half a tbsp vegetable spread
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp milk (I used 1%)
1 tsp flour
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp corn starch

Pie Crust
Cut the butter into the flour, add water and mix. Wrap in plastic wrap and put dough in the fridge to harden the butter.

Filling
In a pot, bring water to a boil, and add the rest of the ingredients. Bring down to a simmer, and cover for about an hour. Take out the chicken and cut into bite sized pieces, add back to the pot. (Add salt, use your own preference)

Thickener
Make a roux with the flour, milk and butter and add to the filling. Bring the filling back to a boil and add cornstarch, boiling for one minute. You want the filling to be about gravy thick, or thicker if you want. Also use your own judgement, because you might have to take out some of the liquid before adding the thickeners. Pour the filling into souffle dish. Now here is were you can either stop and put the filling in the fridge, or continue with baking the pie.

Crust
Roll out the dough into between to pieces of plastic wrap or wax paper (I used plastic wrap, it worked). You want the dough to be about the size of the dish your baking in, maybe slightly bigger. Cover the dish with your dough, and place the dish on a small pan to catch any drippings.

Baking
Preheat over to 425 degrees. Cut a small slit in the middle of the crust, and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake for ten minutes, turn the oven down to 350 and bake for an additional 10 - 12 minutes more.

Enjoy!



Nutrition Facts





Calories 457.9
Total Fat 9.5 g
Saturated Fat 2.8 g

Polyunsaturated Fat 4.3 g

Monounsaturated Fat 2.6 g

Cholesterol 58.3 mg

Sodium 254.3 mg

Total Carbohydrate 60.0 g

Dietary Fiber 4.2 g

Sugars 3.2 g

Protein 29.4 g

Turtle that was outside!