Final Analysis On the Chicken and Dumplings

Everything worked as advertised. I did end up adding about 6-8 cups of water to dilute the broth after I had removed the chicken from the bones and put the meat back in the pot. I think that after I took the broth out (I took out 4 cups) to make the dumplings I had about 2 cups left over. I added about 1 cup back to the pot and froze the rest.

My dinner guests seemed to enjoy them just fine.

Hope they work well for you too.

Chicken And Dumplings Going Public

Tonight I am starting the process for making my chicken and dumplings again. I have been following the recipe that I posted earlier just to make sure that I got it right.

So far so good. All of the measurements for the preparation of the chicken were spot on. (By the way; I did measure the amount of water that I needed for my stock pot. I used ½ gallon of water to cover the chicken.)

The chicken and dumplings are for a meal to be shared with the people from my worship band. Even though our church has officially shut down, we have decided to continue to practice together and perhaps make our gatherings' activities a bit more diversified. We have talked about having a devotional talk from the Scriptures and also making sure that we pray.

Tonight at Conspiracy of Kindness, another blog that I contribute to, I wrote the following:

Ever since the demise of StillWaters I have been wondering exactly what constitutes having church. What are the key elements? What must be present to have had church, and which elements are optional?

I think that it is an interesting question. How much of what we do on Sunday mornings across the world is required for "church" to happen? Are we really achieving church on Sunday mornings?

If you are interested please feel free to check out the post called, "What Exactly Constitutes 'Church' Anyway?" I do hope that there will be some feedback on the post. My thoughts on the subject are in their early stages. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for reading!

Chicken And Dumplins

It has been a snowy day here in lovely China Grove. It started about 1:00 this afternoon and as far as I know it is still at it. The only problem is that it has been above 32° all day. So, instead of having about 8 inches of snow we have maybe 2 inches. The fun will come when we finally dip below freezing tonight. All of that wetness on the roads will want to freeze. Should be interesting heading to church tomorrow morning.

So with our church only having 3 remaining Sundays, I needed to plan to take something to our Sunday evening gathering. I thought about making a pound cake, but I only had one full stick of butter. That would have meant driving to the grocery store, and I vetoed that idea.

What this weather called for was comfort food. And what greater comfort food is there than chicken and dumplings? And what is better than wanting to prepare something that you already have all of the ingredients for? So chicken and dumplings won out.

However, I do wish that I had gone on and gotten the butter and made the cake now. I am really starting to get cabin fever! I haven't seen another human face to face all day. On top of that, I just got an email from the pastor saying that we are going to have pizza at tomorrow night's gathering. <Sigh> Oh well!

Since I don't have the heart to torment my good friend G who reads this blog regularly, and since I can't think of a good way to ship him a container of homemade chicken and dumplings, I have decided to tell you how to make them.

I got the foundation of this recipe from my Grandmother before she passed away. But like a lot of good, Southern recipes most of the measures were pretty general. Unfortunately, I don't think that I will be able to do much better here, but I have a pretty good idea of what I did.

Grandma's Chicken & Dumplings

Ingredients

1 Chicken (Cut up. Leave the skin on.)
2 Bay leaves
1 T Italian Seasoning (Usually contains oregano, rosemary, thyme, basil)
1 clove garlic cut in two
1 t dehydrated onion (You could use fresh. I was feeling lazy. Use about ¼ medium onion finely diced.)
5 black pepper corns
Salt to taste (I started with 1½ t, but I ended up adding about 3 t total)
2 c plain white flour

Method

1) Put the chicken in a stock pot. Cover with water. Add the bay leaves, Italian seasoning, garlic, onion, pepper corns, and salt. Cook on medium heat until the chicken comes off the bone easily.

2) Remove the chicken from the stock. Remove the bay leaves. Remove skin from chicken and remove the chicken from the bone. Tear the meat into bite sized pieces and return to the stock. Let it cook until the stock has a nice, light golden color. Make sure that the broth is adequately seasoned. Remove about 3 cups of stock from the pot and set aside.

3) Take ½ c of the flour and mix by hand it in a bowl with just enough of the stock to make it stick together in a ball. Use as few strokes as possible. Overworking it will make the dough tough. Sprinkle flour on your work area and turn the dough ball out onto the flour. Sprinkle flour on the dough and roll out as thin as you possibly can. The thinner the better. Cut the dough into 1 inch squares.

4) Turn up the heat under the stock pot until it is gently boiling. Slowly add the dumplings, gently stirring them into the boiling stock.

5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have used all of the flour. Return any remaining stock to the pot. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and cook. If you have a crock pot put them in there on the lowest setting.

You could probably eat them within 30 minutes if you just can't wait, but chicken and dumplings get better as they cook. The longer that you can give them the better. Keep an eye on the moisture level and add water as needed. I usually prepare them the day before I plan to eat them.

I hope that this recipe works out OK for you. Chicken and dumplings is one of those things that takes a little practice. If it doesn't go just perfect the first time, don't give up. Even when they aren't the best, they are still pretty good! Thanks for reading.

UPDATE:
I tasted them at about 1 hour, and I frankly couldn't imagine them tasting any better. Hope yours turn out well!

TIP:
Chicken and Dumplings don't really reheat well in the microwave. It changes the taste. They do much better if you slowly warm them back up on the stove top (just be careful to keep them from scorching) or in the oven.