Chicken and Dumplings!

My mom always made such delicious chicken and dumplings, the fluffy dumplings. Below is the recipe I use to make mine. And it yields about 8 servings. I'll give the ingredients first, then some instructions and pics.


For the Chicken:

3 pounds of chicken pieces (leg quarters are fine)
2 quarts of tap water (8 cups)
2 tablespoons chicken bouillon or 6 chicken bouillon cubes
1/4 teaspoon pepper or a good shaking of Adam's Beef Fajitas Season (my all purpose)

For the Dumplings:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
2-1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon each salt & sugar

I used a pressure cooker for cooking my chicken, which is about 20 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure for a whole chicken, less time for cut up. But you can boil it and it works out just fine.

Now let the chicken simmer like that for a full two hours. Longer if the chicken was partially frozen when you put it in. You want the meat to fall off the bone. When the chicken is good and tender, remove it from the broth. Try to make sure there are no sneaky bones which have worked there way to the bottom of the broth. If you find any, just fish them out. I do this with a slotted spoon, and a fork. The chicken is hot, so be very careful not to burn yourself. Collect your chicken in a dish or bowl and let it cool down.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bones. Discard the skin and bones. If you used a pressure cooker, you will need to add about 3 cups of water, but not if you boiled the chicken. Start the broth simmering and add the de-boned chicken.

Mix up the dumplings. Add the milk and oil in a mixing bowl, then add the dry ingredients and mix well. The batter will be stiff. Using two spoons, drop the dough onto the chicken/broth. Try to keep them uniform in size for uniform cooking.

Cover pot with a lid and let simmer for 20 minutes. NO PEEKING EITHER! The dumplings cook from both the simmering broth and steaming in the pot.

Above is at the end of the 20 minutes. Nice and fluffy!! Gravy just creates naturally from the dumplings. Yummy!! 

ENJOY!!