Double-Cooking: Two Things With Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

Stocking up on chicken-and-sweet-potato dishes

So there's this technique, apparently, whereby you can knit two socks at once? I don't know, I've never tried. I mean, I do knit (of course) but I haven't advanced to that level. Anyway, I'm not talking about knitting. I'm talking about food. This knitting technique I don't know how to do was supposed to be a metaphor for a cooking technique that I am all about: cooking two different dishes at once.

This works best when there's a significant degree of overlap between the dishes. My preferred Saturday night stock-up strategy, actually, is to pull everything that needs to be cooked out of the fridge and stare at it for a while, figuring out what I might be able to do with it, and then make a couple of dishes with various permutations of the stuff. In this case, I was over at my grandparents' house, helping them stock up, and so I'm proud to bring you this week an actual recipe from an actual grandma: Apple Cider Chicken Soup with Sweet Potatoes. The second recipe is Sweet Potato Chicken Pie, which is a recipe from my mother.

Ingredients (listed separately for each one, a star indicates overlap)

Apple Cider Chicken Soup with Sweet Potatoes
2 cups cider or apple juice
*2 quarts stock
*pinch of thyme
pinch of basil
pinch of savory if you've got it
2 firm apples
*2 large sweet potatoes
*1 large onion
*2 large celery stalks
*3 large carrots
*bag of frozen peas
*Chicken bits (see instructions for commentary on various ways to achieve bits-of-chicken)

Sweet Potato Chicken Pie
*1 large onion
*2 large celery stalks
*2 cups stock
1/4 cup flour
*2 sweet potatoes
*4 regular potatoes (apparently they were called Irish potatoes when my grandmother was growing up)
*3 large carrots
*bag of frozen peas
head of broccoli/small bag of frozen broccoli
*chicken bits
*pinch of thyme
pinch of sage

Instructions 
(This is for the two-at-once method. You will just have to disentangle them if you want to make one at a time.)

First, figure out how you're handling the chicken. If this were my own kitchen, here's how I'd do it: buy a whole chicken and boil it (this seems like as good a method as any), pick the meat off and reserve it for the two dishes, and then boil the bones even longer for some good stock. This would take a while, however, so in this case my grandfolks bought a couple of rotisserie chickens from the grocery store and used pre-made stock. So work with what you've got, and set your own priorities as to cost and speed!

Get yourself two nice big pots. In the biggest one, start heating the stock and the cider (or apple juice, which is what I used here. Check out that can of apple juice concentrate! Does't that take you back? What, you didn't grow up with cans of juice concentrate? Whatever.)

Get yourself one large square baking dish or two medium baking dishes for the pie. Set them out so they'll be ready.

Chop up the onions and the celery. Pour a nice dollop of oil into the other pot, and start sauteeing the onions and celery. Once they're lightly browned, pour half of the onion-celery mixture into the heating stock in the big pot. Add a little more oil and saute the remaining mixture for a bit longer.

Gravy for the pie

Add the flour to the sauteeing onion-celery mixture. Brown it lightly, then add stock until you have a medium-thick gravy-like liquid. You'll use this in your pie. Take it off the heat.

Chop the carrots. Add half to the soup pot, distribute the other half in the pie dish(es). If you like your carrots very soft, you can steam them before adding them to the pie.

Open the bag of peas. If it's a large bag, add half to the soup pot, distribute the other half in the pie dish.

Any other vegetables you're adding to either dish, throw them in here. In my case, broccoli for the pie.

And the soup's just chilling - well, warming - on the stove

Peel and chop the apples into appetizing chunks. Add them to the soup pot.

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes. Add half to the soup pot. Set the other half aside.

Dice the regular potatoes. Add half to the pie dish. Set the other half aside with the remaining sweet potatoes.

Pour out the gravy over the pie vegetables, thinning as needed.

Put some more water in the gravy pot, enough to cover the remaining sweet potatoes and regular potatoes. Boil them until they can be be mashed.

This gravy definitely needed to be thinned

While the potatoes are boiling, dismember and distribute the chicken. One medium-sized chicken will provide enough meat for both dishes. Two small chickens (which is what we used) will provide quite a lot of meat for both dishes. Tear or cut the meat up into small bits, such as are suitable for soup and pie. Sprinkle the seasonings into the soup and onto the pie. Add salt and pepper. Mix up the contents of the pie dish nicely, so you'll get a bit of everything in every piece.

The potatoes should be done about now. You can use the water from boiling the potatoes to thin the gravy in the pie if necessary. Leave a little water in the pot, and you can mash the potatoes right in the pot itself.

Getting ready for pie topping

Spread the mashed potatoes over the top of the pie. As you can see, I didn't make quite enough - you should have a thick fluffy layer, and I have a thin threadbare layer. The great thing is, it still tastes just fine.

Bake the pies in a 350 oven for an hour or so.

Freeze the soup. There's no way you'll be eating it all right then. You can freeze the pie, too, if you like.

Cost:
Carrots: $2
Celery: $2
Onions: $1
Sweet potatoes: $3
Regular potatoes: $1.50
Juice/Cider: $1.50
Apples: $1
Peas: $2
Broccoli: $2
Chicken: $8
Total: $24

Serves: Pies serve about 8-10 people, soup serves 10-12, or the whole thing can be frozen and feed two people for half a month.

The final pie. You can turn the broiler on if you like the top crispy.