Left overs round two: Smoked chicken pot pies!

Dinner for the night is Chicken Pot pies using the left over smoked chicken. I am tweaking runnyrunny999's recipe to fit what we have in the house in terms of ingredients. Trust me when I say this is an awesome way to use of the rest of your smoked chicken.

Ingredients are pretty simple for this too we just used what we had in the house, potato, onion, carrots and peas. First things first chop of all the ingredients and then make a roux.

A roux is not more than fat and flour, add some milk and you have gravy. We just used butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper along with some chicken stock.

Be Sure not to burn your roux as its combining and be damn sure not to burn your gravy or it will separate. This means almost constant stirring once the ingredients go in but trust me its worth it. For the sake of time we pre-boiled all the ingredients before adding them to the gravy. Don't forget 1 single bay leaf!!!! and be sure to remove it before making the pot pies.

Let this reduce to your desired consistency. In the mean time make some pie dough for the crust with the chilled butter and flour kneading til its smooth. unfortunately making dough is not exactly the cleanest process ever so I didn't take any pictures. However watch runnyrunny's video you will get the idea.

Once your filling is thickened up its time to fill up your cups and add their crust.

We didn't want to waste any dough haha, and we used an egg wash so it gets nice and shiny when it bakes.

almost done....

Time to eat!

These were actually pretty damn good and I would not hesitate to make them again. I will also be sure to heed my own warning and be sure to keep a close eye on the filling as I think our separated slightly due to a lack of attention... Overall there turned out good and were a good way to eat the rest of the chicken!

breakfast round 1

Smoked sausage makes for some really good left overs! more specifically breakfast left overs....

Smoked Sausage Scramble!

just in case I need a refresher later on...

Step One: chop your ingredients! in this case we used Onion, tomato, garlic and Serrano Chiles along with the smoked sausage.

Step two: Saute the onion, garlic and chile til the onion begins to go translucent, once this happens add your sausage and tomato

Once everything warms up to the same temperature add in the eggs.

Step 4: SCRAMBLE

If you happen to have some left over garlic mashed potatoes.... make some potato cakes, bread and pan fry to golden and delicious (not my idea but very delicious good idea aleks)

Time to eat!

This was one of the best breakfasts I have ever eaten let alone cooked myself. Definitely going to make this again next time and I wouldn't change a thing!

ill have..... THE CHICKEN!

I have been meaning to smoke some chicken for a while now, not just for me but to shut my roommate up who is a poultrytarian. I think that means he only eats things with wings that is unless something without wings makes it into his food unintentionally. Since I started I have been almost exclusively smoking pork with the one exception being the thanksgiving turkey but now its time to conquer chickens!

So heres we go, my first two chickens....

Up first is the brine, pretty simple recipe actually and like any brine just heat it up until everything that will dissolve is, and then let it cool and add the birds. Admittedly you should probably only brine these for about 1 hour per pound.... unfortunately I fell asleep and left these in for around 7 hours... thanks fully I think this had next to no detrimental affects on the final product.

 

recipe for the brine found here I also used the "spritz" but not the injection

Slaughterhouse Poultry Brine By Tip Piper of Hillbilly Vittles
1 ½ Gal Water
½ C Salt - Kosher
½ C Dark Brown Sugar
2 tsp Garlic Powder
2 tsp Onion Powder
2 tsp Cajun Spice (Louisiana Cajun Seasoning)
2 tsp Celery Seed

I also added some whiskey to this as well, next time I think I will also add some fresh lemon juice and garlic.

Slaughterhouse Spritz (Good fer everthin!)
8 oz Apple Cider
6 oz Water
4 oz Whiskey
2 oz Cider Vinegar

And here are the Birds....

I also got some fresh sausage to try and smoke from the butcher, just one of each an italian sausage, a spicy italian and one german. Hopefully these turn out good as well.

Here is my chicken stand of choice, I would have preferred the Negro Modelo but this is all I could find in a can.

Fresh out of the brine, rubbed down and ready for some smoke. I used my regular bbq rub on one and just canned cajun seasoning on the other. I definitely preferred the irie rub over the cajun chicken.

Wing Tips tucked in

Time to start a fire...

The wood of choice for today is apple, well kind of the only choice really I have some maple chunks left but im not too fond of the flavor of maple.

My Boss checking in on the progress as usual

Smoker is up to temp, time to add the birds

1 hour in... Time for a quick spritz

2 Hours in... time to add the sausage too so I can have a snack.

Another hour past and the sausage is almost done!

Looking pretty good too!

Shot of the birds before I close the lid again!

I am not gonna lie I think I over cooked the sausage....

But man did it taste good!

Chickens finally done! they took about 4.5 hours at 225* to get to 180 internal in the breast.

Time to dismember our feathered friend....

A few ninja slices later! its ready to eat!!!!

and last but not least my biggest fan!!!

patiently waiting for some samples haha.

So what did I learn??? well first of all smoked chicken is really fucking good. On top of that its really easy to prepare and seemingly difficult to screw up. I think the apple wood smoke was a good way to go because it didnt over flavor the meat. It added that nice smokey bbq flavor but it didnt take away from the meat which is a problem I had when I made ribs for the first time. I put way to much rub on the meat and I ended up with an over seasoned borderline jerkied ribs! I think next time I will add lemon and garlic to the brine to see if it adds any more flavor and maybe even try smoking with hickory for the first hour of cooking to see if I like the chickens with the stronger more earthy flavor. Oh I should also add this is some of the best left overs EVARRRRR just wait til you see what we did with the little left overs we had.... smoke sausage for breakfast and smoked chicken pot pies for dinner!