Chicken and Dumplings

It's New Year's Day, and I currently have a ham in the oven for our traditional lucky meal. However, I decided I would sit down and go through my photo app to see what I cooked, photographed and never blogged. This one stood out to me because of how cold and rainy it is outside right now, Chicken and Dumplings.

It was dark out and all I had was the light above my cook top.

I LOVE this old Southern staple. I always have. It is one of those comfort foods that fills me with warmth and helps sooth whatever is ailing me. One of my favorite restaurants to eat chicken and dumplings at was the Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale, Alabama. Cracker Barrel's aren't that bad, either. My kids think mine are better than theirs. They haven't always been that good, though. When I first started trying to cook this, like a lot of things in my life, I had a tendency to over complicate it until I ruined it. I would use chicken breast, and pre-made stock. It would be bland. I would add veggies and herbs to add flavor, but then it wasn't chicken and dumplings, at least not the kind I had grown up on. It was chicken soup with dumplings. I would use Bisquick for the dumplings and I would drop them in. They would usually disintegrate into the broth. Then Jackson's food allergies began, and suddenly I became a chicken expert.

One of the few things I could feed him without complication was chicken and rice. Once we cleared wheat as an allergen, I began making chicken and dumplings for him, too. Now, I think they are as comforting to him as they are to me. My daughter loves them, as well.

Some of the things I learned from my mother in law, my Memaw and from my favorite cooking blogs/websites helped me figure out how to make them perfect every time. I learned that the flavor is in the bone and started using whole chickens. I learned that to maximize that flavor, it needs to cook a LONG time. If you use a whole chicken, fill the pot with water just until the chicken is covered and cook it on low heat for a few hours, the broth won't need anything but a little salt and pepper. I cook mine in my pasta pot with the colander part on. Once the chicken is cooked until it is literally falling apart, I lift up the colander part (the part for draining the pasta), and I let the broth drain out. Then I flip it over, dropping the chicken out onto a plate. Then I pick the meat off the chicken dropping it back into the broth as I go. This way, I don't have to strain the broth or fish through it with a straining spoon to get all the boney bits out. I add milk to the broth, too. I couldn't tell you how much since I just go until it looks right, but if I had to guess it would be about half of how much broth is in the pot, maybe 4-5 cups.

My daughter loves to help me with this part.

Then there's the dumplings. I roll mine out and cut them into squares. I've heard of several different ways to mix up the dough, but I've started using 1 part whole wheat pastry flour, 1 part all-purpose flour and 2 parts self rising flour. Sometimes I ditch the all-purpose and just split the whole wheat pastry flour and the self rising flour. My husband doesn't like it when I do this. He says I'm ruining a good thing with too much whole wheat flour, but my kids haven't noticed. They gobble it up like they always have. After I mix up the flour, I use 2 parts flour mixture to 1 part milk, give or take a little bit until I get the right looking/feeling dough. It should feel like biscuit dough, not wet and sticky, but not hard and dry like cookie or pastry dough. Then I dump it out onto a floured work surface, roll it out to about a 1/4 to an 1/8th inch thick rounded rectangle and cut it into squares with a pizza cutter. For my family of five, that translates to about 5 cups flour to about 2 1/2 cups milk and a nice long sheet of dumplings.

After I have pulled the chicken off the bones, returned it to the broth and discarded the bones, I add the milk along with some salt and pepper to the broth and bring it to a boil. While it's heating, I make my dumplings. I turn the broth down to a simmer and then add the dumplings one handful at a time. I cover it and let it cook for about ten minutes. Then I uncover it and let it cook for another ten minutes. I use a ladle to push the dumplings down, stir and separate them as they do tend to stick to each other.

This is the best way to cook chicken and dumplings, but I rarely have the time these days. I've found some short cuts that have helped me manage to have this comfort food even during the busy school week. One is to unwrap the chicken, remove the insides and freeze it inside a slow cooker liner (inside a freezer bag, too), the day I want chicken and dumplings (or chicken pot pie or soup) I can just pull it out and stick it into the crock pot in the morning (out of the freezer bag, but still in the slow cooker liner). If I use the liner and a frozen chicken, I don't worry about adding water. It seems to provide enough for itself, but I would keep an eye on it to make sure there is enough liquid for it to cook appropriately. After several hours on low, I pull the liner out with the chicken, hold it over a stock pot or a bowl and cut a few holes in the liner for the broth to drain out. Once I've drained it enough, I set the bag onto a plate and pull the chicken off the bones dropping it into the pot/bowl with the broth. If I'm going to cook it right away, I just add water to the stock pot and continue as always. But, another thing I've learned is to put this slow cooked chicken and concentrated broth into a freezer safe tupperware container and freeze it for later. The fat will rise to the top and it will look separated, but it will all mix back together when you get ready to cook it. When I pull it out of the freezer, I run hot water over the bowl part loosening the contents. Then I drop it into a stock pot on my cook top, add enough water to cover it and turn the heat onto medium low. Then once it comes to a boil, I add the milk, bring it to another boil and add the dumplings. Cooked meat never freezes as good as raw. The texture and the flavor seem to suffer greatly, but I've found that with plenty of broth to cover the chicken, it works for meals like this. I freeze my own pot pies, as well, and they freeze ok, too.

Now, I'm wishing I could have a bowl of this to warm up today, but we'll soon be having ham, greens, corn bread and black eyed peas. So, I guess I'll save this for another cold wet day this year.