Chicken Pot Pie Casserole

Filling:

• 1 bag mixed veggies
• 2 cups cubed chicken, cooked
• 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup pancake mix
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Crust:

• 1 cup pancake mix
• 1 cup water
• 1 Tbsp parsley
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary or basil

To make the filling: Whisk together soup, milk, pancake mix, and ground pepper. Combine with chicken and veggies in a skillet and cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour into a 2 quart casserole dish.

To make the crust: Whisk together pancake mix, water, parsley, and rosemary or basil. Slowly pour an even layer over the chicken mixture.

Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before serving.

This was another recipe I found on food packaging. This recipe came off the side of a box of pancake mix. Chicken pot pie is a great comfort food, so I was super excited to make this. The prep work is really not all that hard and most of the cooking time is baking (hands-off!). Not sure if you have caught on yet, but I tend to change some aspects of most of my recipes. The original recipe called for a mixed bag of cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots. Great mix of veggies, but I felt the pieces would be too big for my idea of a pot pie. I have always had pot pie with smaller, more bite sized vegetables, so I figured a bag of frozen mixed veggies would work.

As promised, I will share with you my mini disaster. I decided to take a nap before I made dinner. I am so luckily to have a child who will allow this (for the most part). I am a very heavy sleeper, so when I wake up I am usually in a fog, for a bit. I glanced over the recipe last night to make sure I had all my ingredients on hand to make the pot pie. So as soon as I got up from my nap, I started cutting my chicken and combining my filling ingredients. Only when the filling ingredients were all together did I notice the chicken was supposed to be pre-cooked! I am hoping if I didn't catch this huge blunder, it would have cooked in the oven while it was baking. Maybe? Not really sure, though raw chicken is one monster I do not like to mess around with. Easily fixed (semi)-disaster. I scooped out the chicken from the mixture and plopped it in another pan to cook it up real fast. After that was finished, it was pretty much smooth sailing.

This was a pretty good meal. The crust was not one that I would imagine a pot pie to have. Texturally, I would have preferred a more flaky crust. The herbs used made it delicious, I opted to go with basil.

I probably wouldn't jump to make this again right away, but I think it could be a great idea to use leftover chicken and vegetables. It seems to be a pretty easy recipe to cut in half. Also, I think you could run with it as a guideline for some other variations. I thought maybe using cream of mushroom soup with beef cubes and chopped up pepper, onions, and carrots? Or switching out for cream of cheddar soup for a bit of a different taste with the chicken. Get creative. Let your mind wander. Experiment. You won't know if you like it, until you try!