If there’s one dish that you should make this winter it’s the classic chicken and dumplings, the epitome of comfort food. It’s a stew-like soup, with a thick stock base filled with big chunks of cooked chicken, carrots, peas and the beautiful pillowy dumplings. It makes for a lovely family style supper. Some biscuits or corn bread wouldn’t hurt and you can go all the way and have a big slice of cake for dessert. I happened to have a rum-flavored pound cake on my cake stand. Everyone was fully sated.
Chicken and Dumplings
There are two ways to make the dish. The traditional way is to boil a chicken in the usual way, with plenty of aromatics to produce a flavorful poaching liquid, with the boiled chicken meat nice and tender falling off the bone.
Or as I did, I took a shortcut by using leftover chicken from a large bird that I had roasted the previous day. I had about a quart of stock that I had done a few days ago, but that wasn’t enough for the final poaching liquid for the chicken and dumplings. So I used up some frozen chicken backs (or use fresh chicken wings) to put in the leftover stock and added an onion, celery stalk, carrot, parsley, peppercorns and garlic cloves. This produced an extremely flavorful double stock in about 45 minutes. This was used in the final preparation.
Ingredients
- 1 3 to 3 1/2 -pound chicken
- 1 carrot, scraped and sliced thickly
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 onion, unpeeled
- 1 bayleaf
- A few sprigs parsley
- 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
- salt, to taste
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- Several pinches poultry seasoning or powdered sage
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup frozen peas
- Fresh dill, snipped
Instructions
- Put the chicken in a stockpot or other large vessel and cover with water by at least one inch. Bring the water and chicken to the boil, skimming off the scum that rises to the top. This will take about 15 minutes set at a lively simmer.
- Add the carrot, onion, bayleaf, celery, parsley, peppercorns and salt. Simmer gently, uncovered, for about 1 1/4 hours or until chicken is fall off the bone tender and the stock is rich.
- Remove the chicken from the stock and let cool. Strain the stock into a medium size Dutch oven.
- Remove the skin from the chicken and take the meat off the carcass. Cut the meat up into medium size pieces.
- Bring the stock back to the boil and lower the heat to a lively simmer. In a small bowl make the slurry, whisking together the flour and water until thoroughly incorporated. Add to the simmering stock to thicken. Add the chicken (you should have at least 4 cups), the sliced carrots and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes over medium heat.
- Meanwhile make the dumplings. Into a medium bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the poultry seasoning or sage and the parsley. Whisk together to thoroughly mix.
- Add the milk all at once and mix using a wooden spoon.
- When the chicken has cooked in the thickened stock add the dumplings by large tablespoons. You should have 6 to 8 dumplings.
- Simmer the stew for 10 minutes, uncovered. Add the peas, stirring gently to combine so as not to break up the dumplings. Cover the pot and cook for another 10 minutes.
- The stew will be silken and thickened, and the dumplings will have doubled in size into pillowy mounds.
- Serve in large soup bowls and garnish with fresh snipped dill
