Pork Pot Pie

Pork pot pie is awesome. For some reason I've made chicken pot pie, turkey pot pie, and duck pot pie, but never pork pot pie. Well, that's changed. As part of the new year I'm trying to use up cooking supplies that have been sitting around for way too long. I had 1/3 of a bone in pork roast that was sitting in my freezer with a 2010 date on it. I think the original roast was too long to fit in the pan so I lopped it off and froze the rest. After that much time in the freezer it wasn't looking like I really wanted to give it a roast, but it was still plenty good for an experiment. Instead of roasting it and then boiling the bones and drippings to get stock for pot pie, I just decided to boil the whole thing. This got me my stock and the cooked meat for my pie all in one go. I don't usually boil meat because it washes out the flavor but I figured that since I was going to keep the stock for use in the pot pie anyway, I'd get the flavor back in the end. I was right.

Pork Pot Pie, Biscuit Topping - adapted from a variety of sources.
2 lbs or so bone in pork roast
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups frozen mixed veggies
salt
pepper

The night before, put the pork in a pot with water and boil until the meat is falling off the bone. Two hours or so. Remove the meat and bone and put it in the fridge. Reduce the liquid until you have about two cups left. Put that in the fridge too.
The next day, an hour before dinner, get the pork out of the fridge. Throw away the bone and all the jiggly bits that you don't want to eat. Chop the remaining meat and set aside. Now you need to make a roux, so melt the butter in a pot over med/low heat, when the butter is bubbling add the flour and cook together for two minutes. While you're doing this, heat up the reduced liquid. After the two minutes, add the liquid to the roux. Bring to a boil, it will thicken. Add the milk and the veggies and the pork. Heat again just to boiling. Remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside while you make the biscuit topping.

Biscuit Topping -
2 cups flour
1/2 cup butter
1 tbs sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or a pastry fork or knives or your fingers or whatever. Just get it mixed up in little chunks in there. Add the milk and mix as gently as you can until it all sticks together. Let it rest while you put a piece of waxed or parchment paper on the table and trace the top of your pie plate on it. Put down a little flour and roll the biscuit dough out so you have one great big biscuit the same size as your pie plate.

Pie assembly -
Preheat your oven to 375
Fill your pie plate with filling, about 3/4 full. You'll have extra. You can thank me later.
Now the tricky part. You need to gently flop that giant biscuit on top of the pie filling. You can do it. Worse case scenario you make a mess but put it all in the oven any way and it all turns out great. You just have to give it a go.
Bake until the biscuit top is done, about 30-40 minutes.

This is good food. The porkiness is spectacular. The biscuit topping is spectacular. You get done eating and you just want to sit down and talk about how great dinner was and how sleepy you are. You might want to wait for a cold day when you've been out hauling firewood or hunting or raising a barn or something to make this. Don't wait that long, this is too good to save for special occasions.