Prep:
Take two pounds of boneless chicken breast, dice in centimeter cubes. (Easiest while the chicken is cold enough to have some rigidity to it)
Do the same with 2 medium russet potatoes
Again with about 5 carrots
And 12-16 oz green beans.
All told, you should have between 3-4 cups of diced chicken, 2 cups each of potatoes, carrots and green beans.
Mince a sweet yellow onion.
Mince 2-3 cloves of garlic
Put a tablespoon of butter in a hot skillet and sautee onions, garlic, chicken and potato cubes.
In a separate (large) sauce pan at medium high heat, bring to boil (leave uncovered to reduce water content in stock)
32 oz chicken stock
a teaspoon of thyme
half a teaspoon of black ground pepper
a sprinkle of red pepper flakes
a sprinkle of ground cayenne pepper
Continue to stir skillet, until chicken and potatoes brown... then transfer skillet content into broth and turn down to simmer.
While this cooks some, preheat your oven, grease up some muffin pans (2 x 6 muffins) and prep your southern biscuit recipe. You'll want it a little drier than for a standard breakfast biscuit that you'd just crack open and eat with a large dollap of butter or some jam, but not so dry that it starts to feel like a crust. If you don't have one that you use regularly, take:
2 1/2 cups of flour. Sift together with 1 1/2 tablespoon each of sugar and baking powder, sprinkle in some salt.
Cut into the mix about 3/4 of a cup of butter until the mix looks like 'crumbles' Easiest with cold butter.
Then slowly mix in roughly a cup of milk... stop when the mix looks like it will still hold a shape, barely (where it is about to go from a 'dough' to a 'batter'.
When this is ready, toss the carrots and green beans into your sauce pan. Let them simmer with everything else just long enough to take the 'raw' edge off them (2 min, maybe), then turn your brother into pot pie / soup mix by:
Mixing 1/2 teaspoon of corn starch into a cup of whole milk (or cream) and slowly stirring in the milk/cream and 1/4 cup of flour into the broth until it takes on a 'thickened' look. Take off the heat.
Add biscuit mix to each muffin cup to about 2/3 full.
Using a tablespoon, add a healthy portion of the contents of the pot pie mix into the center and 'press' down, enough to displace biscuit mix in the bottom of the cup (don't press so far that you breach the bottom of the muffin though). The 'right' amount should give you 2-3 tablespoons of meat and veggies and between biscuit and contents, be sitting slightly higher than the top of the muffin pan. Be sure to fill in the gaps between the meat and veggies with broth/gravy. Add enough biscuit dough/batter to cover the top of each muffin and place in the oven to bake for about 15-20 min (biscuits will brown).
You should still have a couple cups of broth/gravy left, though much of the contents should make their way into the muffins. This can be kept warm and served in a gravy boat to add to the outside of muffins as desired.
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