Ina does it again

Tonight I made Ina's Chicken Stew with Biscuits, which turned out pretty fantastic, and I had the added advantage of Jim's assistance. I started off by dicing up an onion and carrot. Then I heated up 2 1/2 cups of vegetable broth in a small saucepan, to which I added half a chicken bouillon cube. It was supposed to be chicken stock, but I had some leftover veggie, and adding a can made exactly 2 1/2 cups. The carrots were blanched for 2 minutes in a separate pot and I sauteed the onion in just over half a stick of butter (about 2 tbsp less than Ina called for) in a Dutch oven until it was translucent. Jim was put in charge of stirring the onions and then he added in 3/8 a cup of flour and stirred it up until it thickened. I chopped up two oven-roasted chicken breast halves after taking off the skin. I dumped in the chicken, carrots, broth, 1/2 cup of parsley, 1 cup of frozen peas and mixed veggies (I ran out of peas), and frozen whole baby onions. Jim stirred the mixture and then dumped it into the casserole dish. I popped it into the 375 degree oven for 15 minutes.

While they baked, I started in on the biscuits. The biscuits were made in my KitchenAid stand mixer. I mixed together diced unsalted butter (1/2 stick), a cup of flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar until the butter was about the consistency of peas. Then I added in half and half and parsley until it pulled together. I rolled the dough out with my new rolling pin and cut it into eight 2 1/2 inch biscuits, which went on top of the casserole. The stew then went back into the oven to bake for another 30 minutes. Oh yeah, I brushed the tops of the biscuits with heavy cream (didn't want to waste an egg, and that's what Bobby uses) and stirred in a bit of half and half and heavy cream into the stew.



I was quite proud of myself for how well the dish turned out. Jim liked it a lot. I was a little curious to see how it compared to the Bisquick chicken pot pie recipe, but Jim couldn't remember how that one tasted. I know he liked 'em both, but I would hope that the from scratch one turned out better. This one probably wasn't quite as good for him as the Bisquick one, but it wasn't horrible, especially with the slight changes I made. The cream wash didn't allow for quite as pretty of a presentation as the egg wash would have, but overall, it looked very similar to what Ina's end product looked like. It was a pretty easy dish, especially with the previously roasted chickies.