This recipe is from an established food blog called All Recipes. As a busy college student, I love finding recipes that are budget friendly and that will leave me with quick leftovers throughout the week. Growing up, I was never disappointed when my mom announced that we were having chicken pot pie for dinner. Being able to recreate this dish while being away from home is the perfect way to find joy and comfort through a nutritious meal. I also love that this recipe teaches how to make your own easy pie crust! Since learning how to make this crust, I can use this same recipe for other dishes such as quiche, empanadas, and dessert pies. It is an overall versatile and easy recipe to follow.

Cost Breakdown

Recipe Making Process

Gathering ingredients for this recipe at local grocery stores is a breeze because each ingredient is a kitchen staple. In fact, it is likely that you already have most of the ingredients in your fridge and pantry! Carrots and celery are in season during the fall and winter seasons, which can make the meal even cheaper to make. Any other vegetables can be substituted in for the filling, such as corn. Having the chicken breast already thawed, helped with speeding up the preparation/cooking process. It can also be helpful to have the carrots and celery pre-chopped to make cooking time run smoother. I like to have the chicken and vegetables boiling while I am working on my pie crust. This recipe uses baking and boiling as its two main cooking methods. Each step should be simple and clear to follow, leaving you with a beautiful, golden brown, pie!

This chicken pot pie recipe is sure to be a winner for you as it’s been for me. It’s packed full of flavor and the flaky texture of the pie crust paired with the warm filling will leave you wanting more. It’s budget friendly and most ingredients can be frozen (chicken and peas) or used for other recipes (flour, salt and pepper). A tip that I would recommend is letting the pie set for 15-20 minutes before serving. This allows the pie to set and cool, which makes serving it super easy! If you find your crust is getting too dark/burning as you are cooking, you can cover  it with aluminum foil to avoid the crust burning as it may cook faster than the rest ofthe dish. This recipe makes 1 pie or 8 servings, but if you won’t be eating it all in one sitting it makes great leftovers.

In a typical college setting and schedule, it can be hard to incorporate variety and nutrition into our meals all the time. This recipe is an awesome option for cooking steak—a meat that is something more commonly cooked on a grill or other resources from a more established home. It can be intimidating to incorporate steak into a diet without cooking experience or understanding of preparation methods, especially given the typically limited space of a college apartment. Let’s bridge this knowledge gap and see how we can incorporate variety into our diets with our awesome, yet limited resources.

Despite the reduced space in an apartment and the typical lack of some cooking appliances, this meal is quite simple. After baking the potatoes for some time, the steak, oil, parmesan mixture, and asparagus can all be broiled in the oven:

• To broil, you simply push “broil” on the oven and place and rack closer to the top. After a few minutes, you can decide how well done you want your steak to be.
• If the potatoes or asparagus are being burned or cooked too much, you can remove them temporarily or cover them with tin foil to deflect some of the heat.

This meal may seem intimidating, expensive, and complicated, but those factors can be controlled for:

• To reduce the cost of the meat, especially for a singular college student, you can buy less and use a cheaper cut of meat than flank steak. Also buying ingredients on sale and freezing meat is a great option.
• Asparagus can be pricy when it is not in season, so either buying in season or choosing a different vegetable can reduce cost. Instead of using baby potatoes, dice up regular size potatoes into uniform sizes.
• Other ingredients, such as olive oil, can be purchased as a store brand and these ingredients are generally used frequently in other recipes. All of these suggestions for reducing the cost of this recipe were methods I used.
• If you are cooking this meal for a larger group of friends, you can suggest that everyone bring their own meat to reduce financial stress that could burden a college student in social food situations.

Here is a cost breakdown of all the ingredients in this recipe! This can be reduced by following the suggestions above:

Step-by-Step

Lets get cooking! The process is simple. Step 1: Preheat the oven to 375 F. Then cut and wash potatoes and asparagus.

Fun Fact: This preparation is called, “mise en place” meaning “everything in its place”. It is the first step of any cooking process!

Step 2: After tossing the potatoes with the salt, 1/3 of the garlic, and olive oil, bake the potatoes for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Step 3: While the potatoes are cooking, make the parmesan mixture (¼ cup parmesan, 1 teaspoon olive oil, 2 cloves garlic, ½ teaspoon salt, pepper) and spread part of it over your meat. When the potatoes are done, add the meat, asparagus, and remaining parmesan mixture to the pan.

Step 4: Set your oven to the “Broil” setting and leave the pan in the oven for 4-5 minutes. Take the pan out, flip the meat, and let cook for another 4-5 minutes (or cook until the meat is as done as you prefer).

Thankfully, this meal is not labor intensive! You could even do some of homework while the potatoes and meat are being cooked! This meal is delicious and something I regularly crave. After a long week, steak can be a great meal to celebrate accomplishing so much.

I chose the pesto chicken and vegetables recipe because it allows you to get your daily amount of vegetables through an actual dinner meal. The DRI for vegetables is 2-3 servings per day. I feel like oftentimes when I go about trying to eat my veggies daily, I eat cucumbers or carrots as a snack with ranch. This recipe allows vegetables to be implemented into an actual meal. This recipe provides a good way to implement vegetables without going out of your way. The recipe also tasted very good and the pesto added a great flavor to the vegetables and chicken.

Cost Breakdown

About the Recipe

In order to make this recipe more budget friendly you could use cheaper vegetables that would fit well into the stir fry mix. You could also ask to use someone else’s salt, pepper, and cooking oil or just use the ingredients that you already have at home. In order to make this recipe more budget friendly you could also grow the vegetables yourself or buy the vegetables that are currently in season. If needed, you could also use canned chicken breast where it is cheaper.

The Snac Pantry supplies canned corn, canned green beans, canned diced tomatoes, and fresh celery sticks all which could be implemented into this recipe in place of other vegetables.

With some vegetables being more in season than not, I chose to use different vegetables than the recipe called for.  I added mushrooms, peppers, onions, broccoli, carrots, and celery to my veggie mix. This is a typical stir fry mix. All the vegetables tasted very good with the pesto sauce. I especially recommend adding mushrooms into your dish as they absorb the sauce very well.

Overall, I loved this dish and I would cook it again! It also stores and reheats very well! I had leftovers and ate them the next day and they tasted just as good as freshly cooked! This recipe gave me my daily vegetables and gave me a good way to incorporate vegetables into a meal rather than just a snack occasionally.