Yum Recipe - Chicken Pot Pie

Comfort food can be both delicious and healthy too.

Lets make grandma’s recipe fit right in with your dietary guidelines - recipe and article below…

Using a this flexible template based approach you can adjust to fit with your dietary goals and guidelines - see article below…

Ingredients

2 cups cooked chicken - grill thighs or use pulled leftovers from slow cooker roasted chicken recipe

14 oz jar Epic chicken bone broth, great nutrition from pastured chickens

1 c mixed frozen veggies - carrots, peas, corn

1 c left over or frozen diced butternut squash or sweet potatoes

1/4 c sautéed onion

4-6 cherry tomatoes sliced

2 celery stalks, diced small

1/4 tsp salt and pepper to taste

1/2 tsp garlic minced or powder to taste

3 tbs fresh parsley chopped

1 tsp fresh thyme minced

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup flour - ancient grains preferred

Italian spice blend - such as Greek Freak off Amazon

Optional - 1 ready made pie crust or Stokes purple sweet potato or frozen potato cubes

4 medium (10-ounce) ramekins - Amazon

Directions

Thaw frozen veggies - in fridge overnight or thaw in microwave

Preheat oven to 375

In medium sauce pan - gently sauté onion, tomato, celery in olive oil until soft

Add - bone broth, all veggies, meat, rice and spices. Heat until hot, not boiling.

Add cream and flour, stir well and divide filling 4 ramekins

Option - use a slice of pre-baked sweet potato as the topper or go ahead and splurge on a crust top, spending 24g of your daily carb budget.

Pop it into oven for 5-10 min

Pull and let cool 5 min

Make 4 servings - also great as heat and eat leftovers ;-)

Are you going “Low Carb”? Me too! And for good reason - as the A to Z Weight Loss Study, amongst many others, shows us - there are significant improvements in cardiovascular risk, insulin levels,  overweight and obesity, etc. that stem from going low carb and thus limiting our daily intake to aprox 100 grams per day.

A real world example here - your carb budget for the day is 100 grams, you see this chicken pot pie recipe and the question that arises is “can I still eat that?” As a nutrition coach the answer I give is that most any recipe can be made to fit into a certain diet track. Let’s do this one together as an example. 

So for our chicken pot pie we have choices, we could splurge and use pie crust as a topper. Now that uses up 20g of our 100 gram carb budget for the day and because its factory made / flour based that would also use up our “indulgent carbs” allotment for the day. But hey, maybe that’s worth it if it reminds us of grandma. Other options might be to skip the crust and go “toppless” which sounds exciting. Another option, we can use a slice of sweet potato as our top crust, still carbs but all natural and a bit more nutritious. Point being we have a budget and choices.

For reference, KETO has a lower carb budget, just 50 grams per day, while the Mediterranean diet is higher at 150-200 g/p/d. Of course all of these are way lower than the Standard American Diet (SAD) with 200-500 or more grams per day.

And just what are the best carbs to choose? We want to prioritize whole foods, made by mother nature, high in fiber and low on the glycemic index scale. Root vegetables like carrots, beets, and sweet potatoes are all nutritious choices. On the fruit side of things - berries of any kind are your best option. Of course throwing in a non-compliant carb now and then is ok, as long as we stay within budget and primarily eat healthy and natural carbs.  

One diet hack here - time your carbohydrates!  If you just got done with a hard gym session or bike ride good news, you can indulge a bit and have that pie crust topper. Why? Because the insulin spike that often accompanies carbs will be used to replenish your now hungry muscles. Rather than sugars circulation causing trouble they instead become “muscle glycogen”. Of course if you have been inactive, reading a good nutrition book out by the pool all day, you may want to skip that pie crust topper. Bottom line - a well timed carb is a safer carb, one that's easier for our body to handle.