This is no 30 minute meal, but for a frosty, blustery, blizzardy kind of day…
It is *so* worth it!
Chicken and Dumplings
Start with a pot of vegetables and a chicken. Simmer all day.
Onions, celery, carrots, parsnips, a head of garlic, whatever you have. Anything but potatoes and tomatoes. Add in some bay leaves, parsley, dill, peppercorns, thyme… Whatever sounds good and lots of it. Add water to barely cover. This is a fine way to use up odd bits of chicken in the freezer or rotisserie carcasses, we always save those in the freezer for more stock. Remove 1/2 the chicken, after an hour or so, or when it’s done, continue simmering the rest… until you can no longer stand it. Chop or shred the chicken you pulled out. Hopefully it still has lots of flavor and benefits to it. The rest of the chicken will not really be fit to eat. Its purpose has been served. Stock. Mighty fine stock.
Dig through the family treasures…
Mix ‘ up, roll ’em out, and let them dry.
Saute up some fresh vegetables. Onion, celery and carrots play nicely together.
Strain that big pot of chicken broth, you just want the broth, once again, the rest has served it’s purpose. Add the freshly sauteed vegetables and the reserved chicken to the broth and bring to a boil. Add the dumplings, salt and pepper to taste and simmer for bit, while you throw a pan of cornbread into the cast iron skillet and into the oven.
Get your napkin tucked into your shirt front and prepare to be wowed.
Oh yeah, now we’re talking.
There’s nothing like home cooking on a cold and blustery winter day….
Sewfrench 
Hey, look, I know that I’m a foreigner but I don’t quite get the dumplings bit!
Those strips look like pasta! Is that what they are??
Our English dumplings are made with suet and are round and fluffy, no similarity at all!!!
But, I’m determined to try yours! And the pie!! I’ll be making that this week!! YUMM!! =:P
Thanks for the tasty ideas :))
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Well, yes, they are like a pasta, sort of. My pasta doesn’t have any fat, in it, except for the egg.
Normally I make them wider than this, but I was thinking about freezing some of them for soup, another day, but decided nahhh, LOL!
Some people here make the puffy dumplings, but they make them from canned biscuits. Sorry, but yuck, yuck, yuck.
And suet? Isn’t that what we call lard? We got a hold of some, over the holidays, to make an old recipe of cookies, but never, ever again…. Crisco will work just fine.
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No suet is like shredded meat stuff! Totally healthy!!
Crisco and lard are the same, or so I’ve been told. Except one is meaty.
I used the greek version, nea fitini, worked great!
Really liked it!! 🙂
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Yes, lard is meaty smelling, made from pork, not good in cookies.
Are you serious about suet being healthy? My DH tells stories of his dad grinding beef, for burgers, as a kid, and grinding suet into them. When you fry them in a smoking hot cast iron skillet, you get little crispies around the edges, I hear.
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Actually, the ‘totally healthy’ bit was sarcastic, but it doesn’t really come across well on the internet!!! LOL!!!
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LOL! That’s what I thought! Just thought I should make sure!
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Beautiful! I have a recipe for my German grandma’s but have never made them.
And I’ve made the big fluffy dumplings from scratch. The kind I make aren’t like biscuits. That tradition was from my Canadian grandma. They really are quite lovely, but you can’t compare them to these type of dumplings at all.
Can’t stand refrigerator biscuits. Ugh!
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This is my FAVORITE meal- a side of cornbreak & mashed potatoes & we’re good to go. Hey, feel free to bring some by later!! 😉
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Dang, I shouldn’t have eaten the leftovers for lunch. Oops.
We skipped the mashed potatoes, this time, so we ate more than usual… Sorry.
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I’ve never seen dumplings made like this. Was this a GF recipe?
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This is how we have always made dumplings.
I tested a GF version with King Arthur’s all purpose GF flour mix and it worked well. They were pretty fragile, you had to be careful to not break them until they had simmered a bit and absorbed some liquid, then they were good to go. The next time I will add 2 tsp baking powder to help them be a little lighter. But yes, this is how we did them in the south, when I was growing up, and ever since!
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Mmmmm, that looks so good, Lori!
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