Chicken Chile Relleno Pie

Date Completed: 3/13-14/2022

Today’s recipe came from the Free-Form Pies chapter of Handheld Pies. This is the first recipe I’m tackling from that book. I’ve had it forever, and I have always found myself stopping on this recipe page.

Such an intriguing concept - a savory hand pie. The author also states in the description: “These pies got the loudest cheers of any pie in this book.” Quite the endorsement!

Before starting, I did a bit of detective work. The book contains four base pie doughs and the Chicken Chile Relleno Pie recipe says you can use any of them. I really wanted to use the version to match the picture and concluded that it had to be the Versatile Cornmeal Crust.

Garrett actually made the cornmeal pie dough for us because I was too tired that Sunday evening. He put flour, yellow cornmeal, sugar, and salt in the food processor. He pulsed some frozen butter cubes into that. He then added a mixture of egg yolks and ice water until the dough was just holding together.

He kneaded the dough a few times on the countertop to make it smooth. Then divided it in half and shaped as directed. At this point, it was too late to continue so this was refrigerated until the following day when I could help!

Filling time! I started by sautéing onions and garlic until softened. Then I added ground chicken and corn along with some salt and pepper. This part of the mixture had to be set aside in a large bowl so that I could add the second round of ingredients to the pan.

Round 2 began with more onions to soften in butter! These onions got the roux treatment when I added a half cup of flour to the pan. I also added chile powder, paprika, cumin, and oregano. It was SO dry and crumbly. Thankfully the next step was to add a cup of water and continue cooking until the texture was more like gravy.

I combined the two mixtures in the bowl. I also added green chiles, shredded cheese, and lime juice. We were supposed to let it cool completely, but it was already getting late on a Monday night. We were hungry! So we continued to the next step.

The pie dough came out of the fridge and got rolled out about 1/8-inch thickness. I had my ruler out to get the measurements right and cut it down to a big rectangle. I think I did well on the big rectangle, but the small ones came out extremely different. Oh well!

We did go ahead and roll out both halves of the dough so we could make as many pies as possible. Garrett made the cuts on the second batch of dough. His version is pictured above because it was better than mine.

Each tiny rectangle made up half of one hand pie. I spooned out a generous tablespoon of filling on half the rectangles. This was the moment I realized the huge volume of leftover filling that we were about to end up with.

I used a quick egg wash as glue to stick the top piece over the filling. Then used a fork to make a beautiful design around the edges to fully seal. Some were quite ugly because I was quite hungry!

I also put a slash on top of each hand pie to allow steam to escape in the oven. Then finally it was time to bake them until golden!

Taste Report:

The moment of truth! I was so excited to try these cute pies! The crust definitely caramelized around the edges and had a great, crumbly texture.

This is the taste report, though, not the texture report. And honestly… these tasted pretty awful. The cornmeal crust would have been excellent on its own, but it was so overwhelmingly sweet! It completely overpowered any flavor coming from the filling.

These pies were also a very dissatisfying dinner because so little filling fit into each one. Overall, we both kind of… basically… hated these pies. Thank goodness for margaritas on the side to ease the pain.

Mess Report:

The mess report always hurts worse when the final product is as disappointing as these hand pies turned out. This also shows two days of messes since Garrett made the dough the night before.

A messy kitchen added insult to injury after a late weeknight dinner.

Leftover Report:

I still had hope, though! And about a pound of extra filling. So! I always love when I can do a leftover report.

First we tried putting the filling into a quesadilla! We had done the same thing with leftovers from the Easy Chicken Tacos we made last year. This should have been a perfect fit. It had all the trappings of a quesadilla. But alas! These were also disappointing.

It turned out that the overpowering sweetness of the cornmeal crust wasn’t the only reason we couldn’t get much taste out of the filling in the original recipe. The filling itself had next to no flavor at all! Even with all those spices in it. It got me wondering if I severely under-salted it.

I remained determined to make lemonade out of this lemon recipe. Why not turn it into a dip for tortilla chips? I thought the salty crunch of the chips would add much-needed texture and flavor to this mix. We also added a tasty homemade pico de gallo to amp up the flavor and texture. I thought I had finally cracked the code.

It only took one bite to let me know this was another big failure. I just did not like this at all.

Now, I about lost my mind over this series of dinner fails. I did not try anything else. But something still bothers me a great deal. The author said this was hands-down the most loved recipe out of the entire book. I sure hope not! I have three more chapters and three more recipes to try.

Lesson learned, though. I am going to stick to sweet pies for next time. Though it may be a while before I dive back into this book. We’ll see what comes!

Beware of judging a pie by its cuteness.