After making possibly the best roast I’ve ever had, I was feeling pretty confident with my cooking skills. I mean sure my friend Drew saved me from destroying my roast and dinners for the next 3 days but I was the one who slaved away to make it work. Thankfully Drew’s American Test Kitchen cook book had done most of the trial and error for us so I just got to follow along and look like a pro.
Now it was time to finish the rest of my experiment: Taking one giant roast and making 3 amazing meals.
I still had plenty of leftover beef from last night so the plan was to make a Beef Pot Pie and then finish things off with a spicy Beef Stew over Polenta.
This time though I had no friend-safety-net to bail me out if things went south. But with my confidence up I went back to the blog where I had found my epic meal plan and began the prep for the Pot Pie.
If it calls for a food processor…You need a food processor
I noticed that the recipe for the crust called for a food processor to mix the ingredients together. I knew I didn’t have a food processor but I thought ‘no big deal, I have a Magic Bullet which is basically a mini blender, so that should work fine.’
I threw the required stick of butter, cup of flour, and teaspoon of salt, sugar into the the Magic Bullet, placed the cup on the motor and pressed down to blend. My Bullet made a noise I’ve never heard before…a ‘thwaping‘ sound as the blade tried to cut through the cold stick of butter. Flour shot up and around the cup but the butter remained stead fast. The butter was winning…
‘Okay, so apparently Magic Bullets are not food processors.’ I thought. But I still had a ‘Plan B.’
Brittney had received a Kitchen Aid mixing bowl for her prior birthday and although I had limited experience with it, I figured it couldn’t be that hard. I poured out my Bullet cup into the big mixing bowl and added the ‘whisk’ attachment. I plugged it in and flipped the on switch. My results were less than satisfying…
The butter clumped into the center of the whisk and proceeded to be drug around the bowl throwing flour in the air but not mixing in any form. I was starting to feel slightly frustrated to say the least so I turned the machine off and went through my alternative options.
The mixer had two other attachments that I hadn’t tried yet. One that looked like a pirate hook and one that looked like diamond. I figured pirate hook was to skinny for this job and was probably some sort of pasta swirler or something (wrong) so I decided give the diamond a whirl. I dropped the mixer into the bowl, flicked the on switch and prayed.
Success! It wasn’t pretty but finally the butter had met its mixing match. I never realized how small successes in the kitchen could feel like giant triumphs of good over evil.
I finished the dough and put it in the fridge to chill for an hour.
Make Sure You’ve Got Good Directions
Returning to the beef and veggie filling I went through the remaining directions on the blog. Upon reading through the steps I again found some serious gaps in the instructions.
The directions read: “To make the filling, you can use the same meat, potatoes, and carrots you roasted the day before. Add in a cup or so of frozen corn, frozen peas, frozen broccoli, any veggie of your choice really! Spoon in enough liquid to make the mixture stirrable, and then use leftover mashed potatoes (or instant potato flakes) to thicken it up nicely!”
‘What “liquid” was it referring to? Should I be boiling potatoes? What if I only had a small amount of leftover carrots and potatoes from my roast?’
I quickly threw some potatoes in a pot of water assuming I didn’t have what I needed to make the 2 pot pies I was attempting.
Who the hell wrote this blog and how did they expect anyone to actually cook any of this stuff?!’ I thought to myself feeling my earlier micro success melt away into doom and gloom.
‘Well time for Plan C.’ I thought. I grabbed my American Test Kitchen book and quickly flicked through the glossary to find Beef Pot Pie. I searched and searched but for some reason it just wasn’t there. The big holy book off cooking didn’t have Beef Pot Pie?! I checked instead just for Pot Pie, assuming the glossary just didn’t have it listed under Beef. Low an behold I found it, but not exactly. They only listed recipes for Chicken Pot Pie.
‘Well, close enough.’ I figured. and I went to work.
Too Much Of A Good Thing
Of course just to complicate things further this recipe had it’s own filling sauce that it wanted me to create. I figured it couldn’t hurt so I melted butter in a sauce pan, whisked in flour, chicken broth and milk until it thickened. While making the sauce I sauteed some onions, carrots, and celery for flavor and de-thawed some mixed veggies.
By now I realized I had created somewhat of a ridiculous amount of food. I had:
– A whole mixing bowl full of diced beef squares
– A big bowl of mixed veggies
– A pot of mashed potatoes
– A pan of filling sauce
– A pan of sauteed veggies
So I did the only thing I could think of; Combine everything into one big bucket and hope for the best.
Brit took out the crust dough, rolled it out and placed it in the two biggest pie plates we had. I started scooping the beef filling concoction I had created into each pie plate. Surprisingly I managed to just fit every last drop into the two plates and then folded the remaining dough over the top.
I put both my pies into the oven at 400 degrees and baked them for 30 mins.
When they came out they were golden brown and actually looked really delicious. Brittney and I sat down for another later than expected dinner and to both of our amazement found the Pot Pie actually tasted really good!
Thanks Brit for putting up with my chaotic cooking and continued overdue dinner times.
