Gluten-Free Turkey Pot Pies

Leftovers, Anyone?

Turkey.

Turkey, turkey, turkey.

Are you tired of turkey yet?

Last year, when I made everything from scratch and gluten-free, I ended with lots of leftovers. And I needed to find a way to deal with them. My family wasn't interesting in having repeat Thanksgiving dinners for weeks on end. And we have limited freezer space.

So, I looked around at what I had left and I started thinking. I looked and thought and thought and looked.

And then I came up with a solution for many of my leftovers:  gluten-free pot pies!

Leftover turkey. Leftover mushroom soup. Leftover green bean casserole. Make a new gluten-free pie crust. Add some new peas and carrots.

Voilà! Gluten-free turkey pot pies!

Gluten-Free Turkey Pot Pies

I know how to make gluten-free pie crusts now. And I have most of the fixings to make turkey pot pies as  leftovers waiting to be loved. And with adding only two new ingredients, what could be better?

I started off with my favorite gluten-free pie crust, which is the same as the one I used for my gluten-free Quiche Lorraine. And I used my favorite method for getting it all together: my food processor.

I rolled it out between gluten-free-floured pieces of parchment paper. Then I found a thin-rimmed bowl that was just a bit bigger than the bowls I would making the gluten-free turkey pot pies in. I used this thin-rimmed bowl to cut out circles of the rolled, gluten-free pie crust.

I had extra crust, so I grabbed a spare tartelette cup that has bounced around in my kitchen tool drawer for better part of a decade now. The tartelette cup has a fluted edge and is thin metal. Perfect for cutting another shape in my spare dough.

I pressed the tartelette cuts into the center of the circles and used the fluted bottom of the tartelette cup to mark and press the center of the top dough into the bottom, circle of dough.

There really was no reason for all that extra dough and shaping and pressing. I just had extra dough and a couple of extra minutes.

Then I made the insides of our gluten-free turkey pot pies.

I started by spooning some leftover gluten-free mushroom soup into each of four ovenproof bowls. Then I added some leftover turkey and some leftover green bean casserole to each. Then some thawed, frozen peas and carrots, some leftover French-fried onions. I stirred each of them to evenly distribute all that leftover goodness.

I put these into a 350 degree oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, without their crusts, to start to heat the insides.

Then I pulled them out of the oven and topped each bowl with one of the prepared circles of gluten-free pie crust.

Clearly, perfection wasn't my goal. Since the bowl I used to cut the dough was slightly larger than the bowls used for cooking, the gluten-free pie crust rides up a bit on sides. That's fine with me. More crust yumminess!

Besides, those bowls were hot --- straight out of the oven!

We popped them back into the hot oven for about 25 to 30 minutes, watching them closely.

We wanted to be sure the crusts were cooked. Clearly, the insides were hot, since they were bubbling out the top of the crusts!

The crusts seemed to take a lot longer to get cooked this way than what they would have on a cookie sheet. But they did cook. We were eager to eat, so we pulled ours out before they were showing much browning.

These were far too hot to eat right away, but we couldn't wait. Carefully, with hot pot holders, a couple of us dumped out our whole pot pie onto a plate. This let the insides cool a bit quicker.

It also let us dig into that fabulous combination of leftovers called gluten-free turkey pot pie! Outstanding!

These were a big hit last year, and they won accolades again this year. It looks like this is a new tradition! Here are many of the same ingredients as the Big Dinner, but in a different package and with a gluten-free pie crust!

What could be better?

Oh, and my original intention was to put these together and then freeze them for a couple of weeks. Then I could bring them out for an easy weeknight dinner.

That would be smart. That would be ideal. That would be good.

That didn't happen. Nobody wanted to wait for these. We made them, baked them, and ate them! All in the same evening.

Fabulous!