The Sunday Recipe: Creamy Salsa & Chicken Pie

May 10, 2020 at 5:00 am (Recipes)

I was going to make something special for dinner on Cinco de Mayo but forgot and had stuff ready for a chicken pot pie when I remembered. A new recipe was born – chicken pot pie filled with cooked chicken, salsa, cream cheese, and corn. It was delicious. Guacamole and sour cream on the side.

I’m not going to go into the recipe for the pie crust. If you don’t know how to make crust for a pie, talk to Betty. https://www.bettycrocker.com/how-to/tipslibrary/baking-tips/how-to-make-pie-crust

I will offer a few tips. For regular pie crust, the trick is really to be in a hurry – leave the fat content chunks big, like green peas, no over mixing, just enough to bring the dough together, and keep everything cold. Chill the dough ten minutes before rolling out.

I used Spectrum organic vegetable shortening (Spectrum’s shortening is fair trade palm fruit oil, certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).)

Now, with the vegetable shortening, I found it a bit trickier than regular crust so I did a search and found a recipe. I didn’t want to change up my recipe because I LIKED how it turned out when I did an apple pie recently, but it WAS a pain to deal with so I tried her tip of rolling it out on waxed paper then put the pie plate over it upside down and flipping them BOTH over.

It worked, sort of. It really stuck to the paper, maybe because I only had parchment paper. So, on the second crust, I floured the paper and it worked like a dream. I also did not refrigerate the crust before rolling out. It was much easier to work with warm.

Salsa and Cream Cheese Chicken Pie

Ingredients

• 2 cups chopped cooked chicken
• 1 cup of salsa
• 1 block cream cheese (8 ounces)
• 1 cup of corn, canned or frozen
• Crust for top and bottom on a pie.

Directions

Preheat oven to 425.

1. Prepare bottom pie crust in deep dish pie plate.
2. Melt the cream cheese in a pot over medium heat with the salsa and corn.
3. Stir in the chicken.
4. Pour into the pie crust.
5. Cover with second crust, flute edge, and add air vents.
6. Bake at 425 for 35 minutes.
7. Enjoy!

*Bonus recipe – Super Fluffy Guacamole! The trick here is getting a really ripe avocado. If you hold it and squeeze really gently, there should be a slightly spongy give, not squishy and not hard. If it’s hard, put it in a paper bag for a couple days. You just can’t work with an avocado that is hard.

Super Fluffy Guacamole

Ingredients

• 1 large, VERY ripe avocado
• ¼ cup of your favorite salsa
• 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
• A squirt of lime juice
• A pinch of salt.

Directions

1. Clean the outside of the avocado by soaping your hands, then washing the avocado and rinsing.
2. Dry and cut around in a circle to the pit.
3. Twist apart.
4. I use a good knife to thunk into the pit and twist. It should come out easily if ripe.
5. Peel the outside dragon skin of the avocado away with fingers or knife.
6. Cut any black bits off and discard then chunk up the greenish yellow avocado. (I used to just mash everything together but my husband prefers it fluffy so I use a small food processor.)
7. Dump in the avocado, squirt on the lime juice, add the salsa, salt and garlic powder.
8. Process until smooth and fluffy.
9. Enjoy!