Comfort Food for a Cold Night

One of my favorite things to eat growing up were my Mema's chicken and dumplings! However, when I was little, I only wanted to eat the dumplings not the chicken! She was such a good Mema and would always make extra dumplings (sometimes in a side pot without any chicken) just for me! Yum!!! Well, I'm all grown up now and can handle the chicken in the dumplings so I got to work making homemade chicken and dumplings from a recipe I found at TastyKitchen.com. I have found a lot of fantastic looking recipes on this site that I can't wait to try out! Until then, let's get started on the chicken and dumplings!

Ingredients
2 c flour
1 pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 TBS butter
1 c milk (a little less than a full cup is all you need)
2 quarts (8 cups) of chicken broth
3 cups cooked chicken (I bought a "still warm" rotisserie chicken)

In a large bowl you are going to want to add the flour, baking powder, and pinch of salt. To get the butter "started" before adding it to the dry mix, I kind of squished it between my fingers so it wasn't so tough to mix together. Using a fork, I blended the dry mix in with the butter! I used the fork to help break down the butter until I got a good mixture going. Next, you're going to add the milk and continue blending with your fork until a nice dough forms! Once you have your dough ready you need to SERIOUSLY flour your work space! The dough is sticky and I continued to dust the surface with flour as I went. Take a rolling pin, and roll out the dough into a rectangular shape until it's nice and thin!

Then take a pizza cutter (or pastry cutter), and cut along the dough to make about 2 inch strips! It's not going to need to be perfect, because then you're going to cut the other directions to make the dumplings!

After you have the dough cut, you can either use your fingers or a floured spatula and place the pieces of dough on a floured plate. As you begin to stack the pieces on top of each other, you will need to continue to add flour so they don't all stick together! (Trust me, it's sticky! I had one tiny piece that didn't get floured and it got stuck to two other pieces!)

Now you're going to pour your chicken broth in a large pan and bring it to a boil! Once it's boiling, start adding the dumplings in one piece at a time! You're going to want to stir them around a little bit as you add them so they don't stick together or stick to the pot! The flour is fine to go in the stock because it will add a little thickness to it. You're going to want to cook the dumplings about 10-12 minutes (I just kept a close watch on them, and taste tested one after about 10 minutes to see if it still had "doughy" taste and texture!

Once your dumplings are cooked, add the three cups of cooked chicken (shredded), and allow to heat through! Presto-Magic! It's done! All that is left to do, is sit back and enjoy this delicious homemade meal!! Chicken and dumplings are very much a comfort food for me, especially with all these cold nights we've been having! It wasn't at all hard to make (a bit messy-but let's me honest...when am I not messy in the kitchen)! I hope ya'll try this out and take a look at Tastykitchen.com to find some more great recipes! (Feel free to e-mail me any you find that you'd like me to try!) Until then...

~Happy Eating~