Chicken Tomatillo Hand Pies
For valentine’s Day this year I wanted to make some comfort food but with a fun and fancy twist. I had just started practicing making pie dough using cassava flour and at first I was going to make traditional chicken pot pie using my pie dough recipe. But then I saw that someone had made chicken hand pot pies on Pinterest & I decided to do something similar. After thinking about the ingredients that I had in the fridge and remembering the tomatillo salsa that I had canned last year I decided to take a slightly different direction. Since it takes longer to roll out dough for each individual hand pie, I wanted to keep the ingredients for the filling simple. I immediately thought of leftover roasted chicken and tomatillo salsa that I had canned last summer. These hand pies turned out to be a really fun alternative to the traditional chicken pot pie. In the end I filled it with leftover roasted chicken, my own recipe for tomatillo salsa and cheddar cheese. For some extra flavor sprinkle some garlic powder on top of the hand pies before baking them. I also decided to serve it with my tomato artichoke soup, this was a perfect pairing of warm delicious comfort food.
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Chicken Tomatillo Hand Pies
Ingredients
- INGREDIENTS FOR THE FILLING
- 1/4 Cup Onion Diced
- 2 Garlic Cloves Minced
- 1 Cup Shredded Roasted Chicken Use whatever chicken cooked chicken you have in your refrigerator. Chicken breast will work to.
- 1/2 Cup Prepared Tomatillo Salsa I posted a recipe for tomatillo salsa a couple years ago.
- 3/4 Cup Chicken Broth
- 1/2 Cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
- 1 TBSP Cassava Flour or Arrowroot Powder
- 2 TBSP Chicken Broth or Water
- Salt & Black Pepper To Taste
- 2-3 TBSP Almond Milk
- Garlic Powder Use to sprinkle on top of hand pies.
- Pie Dough Enough dough for a double crust 9 inch pie crust
Instructions
- Turn pan onto medium heat, drizzle pan with olive oil, saute diced onions till soft, then add minced garlic and cook another two minutes, watch closely because garlic burns very easily.
- Next add broth and use to deglaze pan if needed, add shredded chicken, tomatillo salsa & bring to a slow simmer. Lastly stir inn shredded cheese till melted. Add salt and black pepper to taste.
- For this dish I like to make a rue out of chicken broth and cassava flour to thicken the broth. Simply scoop a tbsp of cassava flour in a small bowl, add the broth and stir till ALL lumps disappear. You may also use arrowroot powder and if you don't have extra broth use water for the liquid.
- While the filling is simmering slowly add the rue. Use a large serving spoon to stir the filling while slowly adding the rue. If you just dump all of the rue in the pan at the same time and not stir at the same time, it will cause the liquid to be lumpy instead of making it thick like it's supposed to. Once the mixture is thickened, take the pan off the heat, add salt & black pepper to taste. Set aside while making the pie crust.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Next make the pie crust. I used my cassava flour pie dough for this recipe, I will post the recipe very soon.
- If you are using my cassava flour pie dough recipe, see the following instructions. Divide the dough into 4-5 balls that are about the same size. Sprinkle some cassava flour onto the counter than place dough on the counter, press flat with your hand & put a piece of parchment paper on top before rolling it out with a rolling pin to approximately 1/4 inch thickness.
- Grease a cookie sheet using coconut oil or cooking spray. All my cookie cutters got lost in our move to Kentucky, so I I used a 3.5 inch lid that worked very well as a cookie cutter. You can use any size or shape cookie cutter such as a heart shaped one for Valentine's Day. This dough doesn't stretch as easily as regular dough, so you have to be careful when lifting it away from the counter to place onto a greased cookie sheet. I've found that using a large thin stainless steel spatula works best. Gently loosen the dough from the counter with the spatula, scoop the dough onto the spatula and gently slid onto the cookie sheet.
- Place a heaping tablespoon of the chicken mixture onto the bottom pie crust, leave approximately quarter inch of dough edging, using your fingers use water to moisten the edges of the bottom pie crusts, this helps the top crust to stick to the bottom crust.
- Place another pie dough on top and lightly press around the edges using your fingers or a fork. Using a cooking brush, brush the each pie dough with almond milk. Lastly for some extra flavor I like to sprinkle each hand pie with garlic powder.
- Bake hand pies for 25-30 minutes or until crust is lightly browned. I like to serve it with my tomato artichoke soup.
A Fun & Delicious Main Dish!