Chicken n' Dumplings!

Started with a whole chicken. My chicken breaking down skills still need work, it was a butchering! Have to remember when they say 45 min, and you're starting with a whole chicken, it's never going to come off that easily! Also, that when your recipe calls for a three pound bird, and you use a 5 lb bird, adjustments must be made. Luckily, I realized it in time, and was planning to double or triple the veggies in the recipe anyway. I used mostly the Epicurious recipe here. But very important to use the dumplings found in the reviews by a cook in Seattle. They are described as follows:

Seattle's dumpling recipe: to make real flour dumplings here's a basic recipe: 2 cups sifted flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 4 tablespoons shortening, 1 cup of buttermilk or soured milk. Mix together the dry ingredients. Cut in the shortening until crumbly, stir in the buttermilk taking care not to over mix. Allow to stand 5-10 minutes. Drop by rounded tablespoons into the simmering chicken. Bring back to a soft simmer, cook 10 minutes with the cover off, 10 minutes with the cover on. Remove the dumplings to a serving dish with the chicken. If you want to do herbs in the dumplings, stir any kind you like into the dry ingredients then continue.

Fantabulous! Thanks god the girls were watching a video, Barbie's Christmas, if you must ask, so they were fine when dinner didn't appear till 7:30! Wow, there was a time when we never ate before 9!! Ah, children.

I kept being worried that it wasn't building enough flavor, it was too fatty, yada, yada, but at the end of the day, it was just what I was wanting. Including the dumplings, which turned out just like the comforting clouds of deliciousness I remember from my childhood. Yay.

Menu: Epicurious' Chicken & Dumplings, with A Cook From Seattle's perfect flour dumplings. And that's all.

Note: In my research for the Perfect Recipe, I found there does seem to be a weird regional thing with dumplings. In the South, you make them like biscuit ribbons almost, that are rolled out and then added almost like pasta to the bubbling broth. I'm sure they're lovely and divine in their own way, but I was definitely going for the fluffy clouds of my youth in the Northwest. To me, the south has not the cornered the market on dumplings. I know them could be fightin' words, but I'm just sayin'.

 

 

 

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