Don’s Chicken and Dumplings

Tonight: Chicken and Dumplings

This was something my mom used to make, and I have never tried to replicate, until tonight. My partner wasn’t feeling 100%, so I decided to lean into a healthy comfort food, either the classic Chicken Noodle Soup, or Chicken and Dumplings. Essentially they are the same. But with a nod to my mom making this recipe, I went the dumpling route.

I wanted to make it VeggieCentric, so I made up my own recipe, based off of things I read online.

In my crock pot, I placed 3 chicken leg quarters and seasoned them with poultry seasoning.

Then I sliced 3 large carrots, 1 red bell pepper, 1 sweet onion, 2 stalks of celery and one very large jalapeno pepper. To this I added a can of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup and about two cups of chicken stock.

I added fresh thyme, oregano, minced garlic and fresh parsley. I also ground in a fair amount of black pepper. I put in about a teaspoon of Better Than Bouillon Roasted Chicken. This would give it the salt the meal would like, as well as the flavor.

I cooked this for 5 hours on low heat. I pulled the chicken, removed the skin and bones and shredded the rest and put it back into the pot. To this I added about half a cup of Half and Half to ‘cream it up’ a bit, since it looked thin.

For the dumplings, in a bowl I mixed 2 cups of flour with 1 TBS of baking powder and 1/2 tspn of salt. I mixed this and added 1 1/2 TBS of Crisco and began stirring in just a little over 1/2 cup of milk. I put this ‘slightly crumbly’ mix on my countertop with some bench flour and rolled it out to be about 1/4″ thick. I cut this into 1″ squares. These went onto the top of the chicken mix to cook for about an hour.

The result was a very comforting, incredibly tasty meal, perfect for a cool fall evening. We served this with a toasted rosemary olive oil bread, sopping up every delicious drop.