Rustic Chicken Pandowdy

This is less of a recipe post and more of a method for doing the crust on a chicken/turkey pot pie. I've done fruit pandowdies often.  They are a fun, old-fashioned way

that is so easy, I had the thought the other day that I ought to do my pot pie that way also.

I always start my pot pie with frozen vegetables and cooked, diced turkey or chicken. Then I add gravy. I happened to have leftover gravy in the freezer from when we last cooked a turkey. I thawed it out and used it. (I've found that one way to make leftovers seem new is to freeze them for a few weeks and pull them out and re-purpose them.)

Roll out your favorite pie crust recipe or use a frozen one from the store - we all have days where we are grateful for the convenience of a store not far away. I had one frozen in the freezer that I had made a couple of months back. It worked great! Cut it into squares - don't worry about them being perfect or uniform. Just use a pizza cutter and get it done. Remember we are going for rustic not fancy - 

Now layer them on top of your chicken and vegetables, trying not to leave any gaps.

Here's mine ready for the oven. Bake at 400° for 30-45 minutes. You want the crust to be a golden brown and the filling to be bubbling up through the small gaps. Cover with foil after 30 minutes if the crust is brown enough and the filling is still not done. (One trick I do is put my pan of chicken and veggies in the microwave for a few minutes while I am rolling out the pie dough to get the filling nice and warm instead of still frozen. This speeds up the actual baking time so it is done in 30 minutes.)

Enjoy your dinner - We sure did!

You can easily turn this into a freezer meal by freezing it after topping with crust and ahead of baking. To bake, allow to thaw and bake as above.