LAURA LEE ALICE
COOKS
®
A Southern favorite, Chicken and Dumplings are one of those comfort foods that satisfy my soul. Those pillows of fluffy goodness just melt in your mouth. BTW, don't add any additional salt before tasting.
About the Ingredients:
• Chicken: It can be breasts or a cut up chicken with the bones and skin. They add flavor and vitamins.
• Celery: Use the green parts of the stalks
• Carrots: Scrub well
• Onion: A sweet onion is an option.
• Pepper: Fresh ground
• Thyme
• Sage
• Parsley
• Water
• Bouillon: I like Better than Bouillon but use what you have.
Ingredients
• 3 lbs chicken, bone-in, skin on
(it can be all breasts or a whole cut-up chicken)
• 2 stalks of celery, cut into ½-inch pieces
• 1 carrot ( medium) cut into ½-inch slices
• 1 small onion, cut into 8 wedges
• ½ tsp pepper
• ½ tsp thyme
• ½ tsp sage
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 5½ cups water
• 1 Tbsp chicken bouillon or Better than Bouillon Roasted Chicken
Instructions
1. In a large pot, place chicken and the rest of the ingredients;
cover; heat to boiling; reduce heat to simmer.
Cook for 1 to 1½ hours.
2. Remove chicken and vegetables from pot; remove skin and
bones from the chicken; discard.
3. Skim fat from broth; save for another use. Place 4 cups of stock
back into pot; add chicken and vegetables; bring to boil, then
reduce heat to a medium boil.
4. At this point add the dumplings (scroll below for printable recipe).
Options
• You can also use a crockpot; heat mixture to boiling; turn on low
and cook for 3 to 4 hours. Follow steps 2 and 3 above. Bring back
to boiling; drop in dumplings (scroll below).
*Don't add additional salt if using any type of bouillon.
When I make this recipe, my homemade stock comes in handy. It adds
so much flavor to this simple nourishing dish. You get protein from the
chicken and stock plus carbs from the dumplings, celery, carrots, and
onion. It's definitely a meal in a pot. Sometimes I will add a green
salad or coleslaw as a side.
Dumplings like these are definitely a Southern thing. They can be part of a
main entrée or a dessert, like blackberry cobbler*. I grew up with chicken
and dumplings as well as kraut dumplings (which was my dad's favorite).
When dumplings are dropped into a boiling mixture of fruit, sugar and
liquid, it's called a cobbler.
*When adding to cobblers, you can add up to ½ cup sugar to flour mixture.
You can also sprinkle the dumplings with granulated sugar.
Basic Dumplings
Ingredients
• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp shortening
• ¾ cup milk
You will need a medium bowl for mixing.
Instructions
1. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt; cut in shortening
using a pastry blender until mixture looks like coarse meal. Stir in milk
using a light touch with a fork.
2. On a piece of parchment, sprinkle flour and add dough; knead lightly 2
or 3 times. Roll or pat until ¾-inch thick, cut into circles or strips.
3. You can drop the dough directly into the hot boiling mixture (chicken,
vegetables, fruit, etc.). Cook uncovered for 10 minutes; then covered for
10 minutes.
Options
• For savory dumplings you can add ½ teaspoon dried herbs or ¼ cup
shredded cheese.
• For a sweeter dumpling, add 2 tablespoons sugar to the flour mixture
then continue with recipe.
• If you want the dumplings to be brown on top, put under the broiler for a
few minutes.
• For thinner dumplings (slick dumplings), roll the dough on a floured
surface until thickness is reached, about ¼-inch; cut into strips
(2x4-inches) before dropping into liquid. Using pie crust makes an even
thinner dumpling.
Recipes are like stories; they can change from person to person. Everyone has their idea of how a recipe should be, even
though it may have changed from the original. We will never know the true author of the original recipe, regardless of
what some may say. That's why I go back and look through the oldest cookbooks that I can find. Sometimes it's not the
recipe in the books that I find, but the tiny pieces of handwritten recipes and newspaper articles that are stuck within
the pages. That's where the real story is, finding those simple Southern recipes. -Mac