Curried Chicken Pies

We had a slow cooker fail at our house last week.

My husband decided to use the slow cooker to make dinner on Thursday.  He put some potatoes, carrots and onions in the cooker, then placed some frozen chicken thighs on top and covered the whole thing with a couple of tins worth of mushroom soup. 

Should've worked, right?

And it would've, had he started earlier in the day. 

Unfortunately, the veggies were still half cooked and the chicken still pink inside by the time supper rolled around.

We scooped enough to serve the two of us from the slow cooker, put it in a casserole dish and finished it in the microwave.  It was tasty, but we were left with six chicken thighs, a pile of half cooked vegetables, and the sauce from the cooker to use up.

My fella cooked dinner again on Friday, and used some of the vegetables in a hash.  Here's what I did with the rest of the leftovers:

I chopped up the remaining vegetables, mixed in some leftover green beans and some frozen peas, shredded the chicken, and used these ingredients together with some of the leftover sauce to make individual meat pies.  I ended up with about 3 cups of mixed vegetables and 3 cups of shredded chicken. 

I made enough pastry for three pie crusts, using the recipe found here.  (I tripled the quantities given.)

Next, I combined the vegetables and chicken in a big mixing bowl and added in just enough sauce to moisten them.  (There was 'way more sauce than I needed.  I put the rest in the freezer to use another day.)

The mixture looked kind of bland so I added in some Patak's mild curry paste.  I used about 1/3 of the jar.

I lined 18 muffin cups with pastry, spooned some of the filling into each pastry lined cup, then cut out a pastry topper for each small pie.

I brushed the pastry tops with milk, then sprinkled them with a little seasoned salt, mostly for the colour it would provide. 

The pies baked at 350ºF for 40 minutes, and came out of the oven looking like this:

We each had two pies for supper.  Once they had cooled to room temperature, I wrapped the pies individually, then placed them on a baking sheet and froze them.  Once they were frozen, I packed them in ziplock bags.

The frozen pies can be reheated direct from the freezer, without thawing.  They'll provide us with a number of convenient lunches or dinners in the weeks to come.