I never ate chicken and dumplings growing up so my experiments with trying different recipes aren’t based on trying to recreate anything from my childhood but just playing around with a dish my girls and I all liked the first time I made it.
The first chicken and dumpling recipe I tried was good, but I don’t like relying on store bought “cream of whatever” soups. Last night, I merged a few recipes. I think the dumplings were better in the first recipe because of the parsley and cayenne. These were bit bland.
But I liked just drizzling the flour and water into the soup to thicken it rather than adding a creamed soup. So next time I might combine the recipes.
Chicken and Mild Dumplings
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken
- water to cover and then some
- a few bay leaves
- 2-3 stalks celery, cut up
- 1-2 carrots
- 1 small onion, peeled and chopped
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/2 cup water
Dumplings:
- 2 cups flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 2 Tbs butter
- 1 cup milk
Instructions
- Rinse the chicken and put in a large stockpot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Skim off any scum that rises, then add the bay leaves, salt, pepper, garlic powder, carrots, celery and onion. Simmer 45 minutes to an hour then remove the chicken and let cool a bit so you can remove the meat. Discard the bones and skin and fat. Shred the chicken into large pieces and return to the pot of broth.
- Combine the flour and water, then stir into the broth to thicken.
- Mix up the dumplings by sifting together the flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. (And next time I’ll add some dried parsley and cayenne pepper.) Cut in the butter then add the milk and mix. I did this all the food processor.
- Bring the broth to a simmer and slowly drop in small spoonfuls of the dumpling mix. Simmer 15 minutes until cooked through. Try not to stir too much as you don’t want the dumplings to break up into small bits.
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