Save Money Making Chicken Potpie
How to Deconstruct a Classic Recipe to Make it Even More Inexpensive
Apr 30, 2008
Straightforward money saving recipes can be made even more cost-effective, if you follow a few simple strategies.
Chicken Potpie is a favorite comfort food for many. As the economic outlook becomes grimmer and people start to tighten their belts they look towards the inexpensive comfort foods of the past. However, even the frugal standard chicken potpie can be made less expensive.
Typical Ingredients in Potpie
- carrots
- potatoes
- peas
- mushrooms
- onion
- butter
- all-purpose flour
- chicken broth
- herbs
- salt
- pepper
- cooked chicken
- pastry
Basic Instructions
- A typical potpie recipe will tell you to boil the hard veggies in water to soften them. While the veggies are cooking, they have you melt the butter, fry the onion, and add flour to make a thickening paste, then you add the broth along with the spices and herbs to make your pie sauce.
- Next you drain your veggies and mix them in the broth along with any soft veggies (such as mushrooms and peas) and put into your casserole dish. Finally, you add the crust and bake for the recommended amount of time.
Assumptions in the Recipe
- Often today’s cook will look at the recipe and buy canned broth, canned chicken, a pre-made pastry crust, as well as the exact ingredients in the recipe. To save money you must not do any of these things. Use the following money saving strategies.
Save on the Chicken
- Buy fresh or frozen chicken on sale, preferably the dark pieces with skin and bone. Put the chicken in a pot and cover with water. Boil the chicken until no pink shows when pierced with a knife (20 minutes is usually sufficient). Save the water when you drain the chicken. Put the water in the refrigerator to cool so that the fat rises to the top and solidifies. Remove the fat.
- Pull the skin and fat from the chicken. Remove the bones. Discard all waste.
- Cut or shred your chicken into small pieces.
- This may seem like a lot of work for one potpie, which is why you will do this in bulk. Buy a large quantity of chicken. After you’ve processed it freeze the meat in suitable meal-sized portions and freeze the broth in 8 or 16 ounce cups. Now you have the raw materials for multiple pot pies or other chicken-based recipes. In addition, you’ve generated less waste. Instead of buying two separate highly processed (with lots of added sodium) ingredients you’ve made your own which saved both money and waste.
Save on the Pastry
- Make your own pastry.
- Pie crusts scare many people. However, your basic oil pastry is almost impossible to screw up, is healthier than a lard-based recipe, and is cleaner to roll out since you roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper.
Save on Veggies
- Learn to substitute what you have on hand or what is on sale. Perhaps you don’t have carrots or potatoes, use other hard veggies such as cauliflower and sweet potatoes. Maybe you are out of peas or your children won’t eat them. Substitute corn.
- Other veggies can be cheaper and surprisingly delicious in a pot pie, experiment with jicama or winter squash.
Save Water and Make a Richer Broth
- Rather than boil your veggies in water, boil them in the broth you will use for the sauce. This requires more time in the kitchen as you won’t do both steps at the same time but it is much less wasteful. After the veggies are boiled, drain and save the broth to use to make the sauce. In fact, make the sauce in the same pan you boiled the veggies in and make one less dirty dish.
Other Substitutions and Ideas
- Don’t use butter to fry your food. Margarine or lard can be cheaper. There are health issues regarding what fats you use so make decisions based on your economic and health situation.
- Perhaps you don’t have the herb your recipe calls for. Learn about the herbs you keep in the pantry and find out what meats and veggies are compatible with what herbs. Most spice and herb bottles will give you a measurement recommendation based on the volume of the dish to which you are adding the herb or spice. If not check out your cookbook, most good cookbooks will have a chart with guidelines for common ingredients.
- Cooking at home saves money. Learning good shortcuts, substitutions, and other techniques will multiply your savings.
The copyright of the article Save Money Making Chicken Potpie in Personal Budgeting/Finance is owned by Melissa Howard. Permission to republish Save Money Making Chicken Potpie in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
