The great thing about Thanksgiving is turkey and stuffing. Lets be honest, being thankful for the abundance of life and friends is great and all, but common. Stuffing if the best thing ever! Since that’s always the first thing to go and turkey seems to last forever, there’s always a lot of that left over. What do you do with it? Well, you can make turkey soup (same procedure of chicken soup), or turkey sandwiches.
Or of course, there’s turkey pot pie. Upon recommendation from a coworker, I made a full pie and two smaller pies to freeze for later which I anticipate will come in handy for a day that I don’t feel like cooking.
I love the creamy gravy like filling wrapped in flaky pie pastry. It melts in your mouth in a comforting bite on a chilly fall day.
When I cook a turkey, I usually save the juices that collect at the bottom of the roaster and use some of it for gravy, and put the rest in the fridge. I use the fat the congeals at the top to fry the onions and vegetables in it to keep the flavour of turkey in the dish. I also use the rest of the juices later to make a sauce.
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup Turkey fat or Butter
- 1 Yam
- 1 Onion, diced
- 1 Carrot, diced
- 3 Cloves of Garlic, minced
- 1 Corn, kernels cut off
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme
- Salt and Pepper
- 3 Tbsp. of flour
- 3 cups of Turkey stock
- Left over turkey, cut into bit size pieces
- 9” Unbaked Pie shell
- One egg
1. Heat a large skillet on high and add the turkey fat or butter until it melts.
2. Peel an onion and dice it up.
3. Chop up some baby carrots into little baby pieces.
4. Peel and dice up a yam.
5. Peel a corn and cut all the kernels off.
6. Peel, smash and dice up a few cloves of garlic.
7. Take a few sprigs of thyme and the trick is, to go against the grain to pull all the leaves off. Meaning: In the left picture I’m holding it from the stem, but what you need to do it flip it around and hold it by the tip and drag your fingers down each sprig.
8. Add salt and pepper. I like a lot of pepper in my pot pies. It makes it a little spicy.
9. Once you think the vegetables are almost cooked through and they’re happy and sizzling away, put in the flour to create some sort of roux. Cook down the flour a bit and stir and scrap the bottom of the pan to coat everything.
10. Get some turkey stock and add it in and stir all throughout to incorporate into a gravy like mixture.
11. Chop up the cooked turkey into bite size pieces and add it to the mixture. Stir to mix into the filling and simmer for a bit to thicken it all up. Once thickened. Turn off and cool down. The filling has to drop in temperature before you can put it into the pie shell.
12. Make a pie crust according to this recipe. You can leave out the cheese and make it all out of white flour if you don’t have spelt flour on hand. Use whole wheat even (that’s what I did for this batch)
13. Once the filling has cooled down so that it’s still warm but not piping hot, fill the pie shell.
14. Lay on the top layer, tuck the edges under and flute the edges.
15. Whisk up an egg and brush it over the top and all around the pie. Poke the top a few times with a fork and you’re ready to go! Pop in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes then turn down the heat to 350 and keep baking for another 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown. If you think the edges are browning too quickly, put a tin foil jacket around the edge of the pie.
The great this is that you can make smaller ones and stick them in the freezer to pull out when you don’t feel like cooking later!
