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Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture
Prep Time: 30 minutes or less | Cook Time: 2 - 3 hours | Serves: 6
Dinner » Chicken » American
Visual Recipe By: Angela aka PotatoCouch


Ingredients:

With the end of football season upon us, I was faced with the odd feeling of a Sunday without hours of watching football and drinking beer. It's cold outside, so it's perfect to make chicken and dumplings.

Keep in mind I've made this a handful of times, so any suggestions or horrified comments are appreciated.

3.5 qts water, brought to a rolling boil
1 tsp. salt (I used kosher)

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 1

Step 1:

4 lbs whole chicken legs, skin removed.

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 2

Step 2:

Using your knife cut up:

2 and a half smaller carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks (be sure to save the leaves), sliced
1 shallot, roughly sliced
1/2 large yellow onion (not pictured: I had to run to the store)
2 cloves garlic, quartered
1/2 tsp. dried parsley (not pictured)
1 bay leaf

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 3

Step 3:

Toss the stuff in, and it won't look very pretty at first:

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 4

Step 4:

Let simmer, uncovered, for two hours. Here's a look after an hour:

After two hours, remove chicken and set aside. Fish around with a large slotted spoon to make sure you don't miss any delicious meat.

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 5

Step 5:

Mmmm... bowl o' chicken...

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 6

Step 6:

Strain the broth and toss out the veggies. Here's my fancy setup:

My broth yield was about 6 quarts, or 8 cups.

Return broth to stockpot and let simmer. Add:
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
I didn't have the lemon juice so I didn't add any.

Chicken and Dumplings recipe picture 7

Step 7:

While that's going on, make you some dumplings:
2 cups King Arthur bread flour (I didn't have All-Purpose or even cake flour, but this seemed to work really well)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 and a quarter tsp. salt
1 cup and 2 Tbsp. milk

The dough was really, really sticky...
so I ended up adding about 1/4 more of a cup of flour.

Mix together in a bowl, and be sure to not handle the dough too much. The less you rough it up, the lighter and fluffier your dumplings will be. Let sit for 5-10 minutes.

Chicken and Dumplings recipe photos 8

Step 8:

Flatten out and cut into strips and then into 1/2 inch squares. I highly recommend a dough scraper.

Chicken and Dumplings recipe photos 9

Step 9:

After your chicken has cooled, take out all bones, cartilage, and other weirdly hard parts and shred into bite-sized pieces. Add in.

Set aside as many dumplings as you think you'll eat when you make it, then drop the dumplings one-by-one into the mix. They should float to the top.

It looks a little yellow, that's just because of my stove light.

I don't have a pretty little bowl shot with some parsley sprigs as garnish, sorry!

This yields about 5-6 servings (1 bowl). Approximate cost per serving: $2, and that's being generous.

For those of you living on your own or with one other person:

I separated the leftovers into tupperware containers and froze individually. The dumplings were placed on a baking sheet and frozen, then separated into ziplock bags to go with each individual serving.

step-by-step recipe photos 10

User Comments for Chicken and Dumplings:

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Toss out the veggies? Nope. Strain the veggies, certainly, but re-fortify them with a simmer with a bullion cube or two in a separate saucepan, then toss 'em back in with the dumplings.

The yellow in the pic looks like rendered chicken fat (strain that off and save it) to me, but hey, that's just my opinion. The dumplings recipe is great...doughs and whatnot are not my favorite things to work with.

I will try it your way!

Thanks for the recipe, Angela
Comment from: Ouroboros0427  Date Posted: 04-Feb-2008