I made chicken and dumplings last night and it was amazing.
My mom is visiting, altogether we are seven in my household right now...I think...anyway...
We couldn't find mom's old recipe that makes spectacular no fail dumplings. So we used Betty Crocker dumplings recipe, which looked very much like Mom's. Unfortunately, I used LARD instead of shortening. Note to self...don't use lard in dumplings, they will all dissolve or turn to sinkers. I don't know how many times I have to experience that before I finally remember.
So the first batch, though it thickened up the soup nicely was a major fail.
I made a second batch without a recipe, and they puffed up and were AMAZING with no sinkers, and none of them dissolved.
So here you go:
1 whole chicken, washed inside and out...throw that puppy in a pot and cover with salted water. Put in a bay leaf if you have it.
Saute some onions and celery in a pan if you like, throw that in there too.
Boil it about an hour or 90 minutes, until the meat will fall off the bones, but before it actually does..remove the chicken and let it cool a little, then pick off the meat (I pull it off in chunks as big as I can) and put back into the pot. Discard the skin and bones (I throw a leg bone and a thigh bone back into the pot just because) Throw some carrots (canned or uncooked). If you use canned, drain off the liquid first. Fish out the bay leaves and discard.
I pour in a can of chicken broth just because I like to have lots of liquid and it can lend a little strength to the broth, in the event it's weak.
Bring it back up to a boil.
Mix about 4 C flour, 3 tbsp of baking powder, a tbsp of salt in a bowl, whisk together. Add about 1/4 cup of shortening or oil, more or less, mix together. Pour in about 2 c of flour. you should have a wet dough that is kind of medium soft...drop by LARGE tbsp into boiling broth. Fill the pot, try not to drop them on top of each other.
Boil covered for 10-15 minutes, don't open it to look. you might need to turn down or move a little off the burner if it starts to boil over. If you have a lot of dumplings, you can cook them for 15 minutes here.
Take off the lid and boil for another 10 minutes uncovered.
If you want to really have pretty dumplings, throw in a couple of tbsp of parsley into the flour mixture before you add milk, when you're making them.
