Chicken and Dumplings

So, I had been wanting to try to make chicken and dumplings for some time now...namely because I had never had them before. They sounded interesting, so I thought, why not. Plus, Jacob got really excited when I mentioned making them.

Since I didn't know what they should taste like, I read a bunch of different recipies and decided on two that I thought sounded good...so I took a little from this and a little from that, and BAM! Chicken and dumplings. Here is what I did. (Please excuse the picture quality...they were taken with my iPhone...)

For the chicken portion, I used this recipe from Baking Bites.

Ingredients:
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
40-oz chicken stock
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper, to taste
3-4 cups cooked, shredded chicken
**I also added some Italian seasoning to it and it was YUM!

And for the Buttermilk-Chive Dumplings, I used a recipe from Tyler Florence, which I found here. Note, I didn't have chives, so I used dried parsley. That was a good decision... Also, this could be cut down by a fourth. I didn't know that before I started, but I had a bit left and also had some huge dumplings.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup chopped chives (or parsley)
1 cup buttermilk

To make the dumplings: Take the dry ingredients and sift them into a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk and chives/parsley. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold together until it's a cake batter like consistency.

It's good to have a helper around to clean up the floor behind you as you go....

To make the chicken portion, all you do is heat up a large pot or dutch oven and add the celery, carrots and onions. Leave them in there for about 5 minutes while they sweat it out. Then throw in the garlic and leave it along for another couple minutes. Add in the chicken stock, salt, pepper, thyme, (Italian seasoning if you so choose) and chicken to the pot (remember, the chicken should be cooked and shredded already. Mine was still pretty frozen when I pulled it out of the fridge, so I cubed it and then boiled it and it worked just fine. It was also super quick!) Bring this to a boil.

Once the chicken is brought to a boil, you can start dropping in spoonfuls of the dumplings. My pot wasn't really wide enough, so they ended up touching and cooking. Guess what. It wasn't the end of the world! I let them sit in there with the lid on for about 13 minutes. Next time I would make my spoonfuls a bit smaller, but like I said, they were still delicious!

So maybe my dumplings looked a bit more like biscuits than dumplings, but that's ok. They were great, and the chicken portion was YUM!! I have actually thought about taking it and turning it into a chicken soup recipe. Jacob agreed, he really enjoyed it!

Conclusion: If this is what chicken and dumplings are all about, I'm sad I have gone this long without them!! I will definitely be making this again.