A Proper Pot Pie

Tonight for dinner I made my first from scratch pot pie. The only way it could have been scratchier was if I milled my own flour, raised my own meat, and grew my own vegetables. So, I'll say then, its my first made-from-store-scratch-pot-pie. That's a bit of a mouthful though, isn't it?

I'm excited about this dish in particular because of how resourceful I was in using ingredients from my kitchen. Over this summer I started to focus on going zero waste, not so much with packaging etc. but ingredient wise. I don't want to let a single thing go to waste so this pie made me proud tonight using up all my scrappy bits.

First, the crust

I had rendered my last batch of lard just yesterday. I fried up pork rines for snacking and topping, and reserved the remaining fat in the refrigerator. Today I scraped the bottom of the cool lard puck to get the last impurities from it and then melted it down again to pour into my usual jar I use for cooking. There was plenty of lard leftover so I wanted to find a way to use up a large amount of lard all at once.

At first I planned to do tortillas, but when I woke up this morning feeling sick I decided I should take things easy as much as possible. Pie crust, I decided, would be easier since its just two balls of dough instead of many little ones that I then have to press and cook on the stove. I pulled up a recipe, shaped the dough and set in the refrigerator to roll later when the filling was ready.

For the filling

I scavenged through the refrigerator for rogue jars of forgotten dinners. The oldest one was a jar of dehydrated ground beef crumbles. It was the remains of an experiment that I chickened out of actually trying. I wanted to make pemmican which is an age old method of preserving meat, especially for traveling. Various kinds of meat can be used - it just needs to be fully dry/aged. It is then encased in animal fat such as tallow and shaped up into little pucks or bars.

I had wanted to make some sort of shelf stable meat snack like beef jerky to easily take with me and the kids on our outings around town. So I thought I would give this a try. When it came down to it though, I wasn't ready to commit to eating bites of pure tallow and so, relegated to the back of the refrigerator, my dehydrated ground beef languished for weeks, until tonight.

Next was the chicken and cabbage leftover from last nights dinner. Perfectly seasoned and tender, it was begging to be made into a pie. And right next to it was the very bottom of the beef stew container that we had eaten for at least three dinners in a row (not to mention a lunch too) of which I could no longer stand the thought of eating even a bite.

Lastly, the gravy

I fished out a jar of bean and beef stock, a byproduct of making that same stew. Last week I discovered a cut of beef I had never known before, neck bones. At $2.67 a pound I rushed to my grocery store and brought home several packages, with mainly stew in mind.

For the stew I soaked beans overnight first and instead of draining out the viscous soaking liquid I kept it. After making the stew, I pulled out the neck bones and boiled them for two more days with fresh water and the bean liquid. I wasn't sure what I would use it for but I knew the stock would be chock full of flavor. I guessed I might use it for chili but when I spotted it tonight I knew it would be perfect for the gravy.

With all my components at hand

it was a simple matter to heat the chicken, old stew, and dehydrated beef in a skillet. I added in a can of peas and a can of carrots from the panty and the filling was ready. The gravy was the easiest gravy I've made in my life. Just added a pat of butter and whisked in some flour while heating until it came together in the right consistency. Then I mixed the gravy though the filling, had Mai help me roll out the pie crust dough, then filled the pie, popped on the top, and presto! Dinner was done!

The active cooking for this meal was minimal. That gravy was even easier to make than packet gravy I have used in the past. The most involved part was making the pie crust, which I know can be intimidating if you haven't made it before. But trust me, despite the numerous recipes out there for you to try, a crust really comes down to three basic components. A fat, the flour, and a liquid. Any variation, combination, or method for mixing these three things together will have different effects on the dough - but if you're mindful of at least the proportions, you really can't get too far off. My dough didn't hold very strongly and broke when I tried to lift it over the pie, but for a home cooked dinner, I'm not looking for any awards on appearance. I don't sweat the small stuff like that It still tasted delicious.

Zero waste cooking

is turning out to be easier than I thought. In fact, the was I used to cook, mostly homemade, is more difficult than what I'm doing now. I constantly made new dinners, from step one, but lately, because I've taken the time to fully utilize every scrap in my kitchen, a lot of my dinners have the home cooked quality without nearly so much effort. Think about it, if I wanted to make chicken pot pie, and had started tonight with raw chicken, whole carrots, and not even a drop of broth in sight to make a gravy? It would have taken me hours to put this meal together. Instead, I made something that tastes like it came from grandmas kitchen on the farm, with the ease and convenience of a meal delivery kit in Suburbia. That's the kind of cooking I'm talking about yall!