I know this is an awesome make-from-scratch recipe! You want quick and boyfriend pleasing, and so I am going to provide here shortly. My grandma lived in Arkansas and I might be treated (from mom or grandma) chicken n dumplings just like this (from scratch) or, I’ve seen my grandma cut up canned biscuits for a short cut, or buy packaged thick, twisty noodles (called dumpling noodles) to make it, but, eh, neither are quite the same. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it where the bone and skin were still in the pot when it was served, just depends. In a respect it’s like spaghetti. no two pots are just alike depending on the ingredients used (tomato products, olives mushrooms, etc.) Pot luck.
My electricity has been out since Saturday and MI came to stay with a friend in a nearby town (Eugene/Springfield) on Monday). Wednesday, I decided I should provide dinner and I wanted to do it economically because I am on a budget and I would need to feed 6 people (friend, friend’s husband and 3 children and myself) so, I decided on chicken and dumplings. I bought a bag of frozen chicken breasts (which you cook from frozen), a box of bisquick (makes wonderful dumplings!) and a box of Knorr chicken bullion cubes (.87 cents I think). My friend had the milk needed.
Boneless chicken breast takes 20 minutes to cook (it’s a law and I learned it from my grown daughters who have it mastered and make a great recipe called Salsa Soup using it). Bone-in chicken requires much more cooking time.
I used a big stainless steel dutch oven, dumped the entire contents of the bag of boneless chicken breasts in it, and covered it with plenty of water and then some (I wanted plenty of cooked broth). I cooked uncovered (entire process). I sat down at my laptop (in my relax place) and wrote down the time in my notepad so I could keep up with the 20 minutes. I knew I would allow more cooking time because I started the pot cold. It is 20 minutes from when it starts boiling. At some point I got back in the kitchen and made the dumpling dough using the recipe on the side of the box. I doubled the recipe using 4 1/2 cups of Bisquick and filled the small 1 cup liquid measure to the 2/3 line twice (to double the recipe.) I used the appropriate measuring cups for dry and liquid measuring.
I shouldn’t forget to include that I’d crumbled 4 of the Knorr bullion cubes into the pot, and sprinkled salt like one would for generally salting water. It wouldn’t have tasted salty enough at the time but it would be reduced by time it was serving time and the salt would condense so I didn’t touch the seasoning any more (except for adding pepper seasoning) until I could taste it right at the tail end of the cooking process to see if any salt would be needed which it did not it was just right.
I worked on a large wooden cutting board that my friend had prepped earlier by squeezing out lime juice from cut lime wedges and cleaning the board with the juice, and she did the same to the rolling pin (I waited for those to dry and had never heard of liming before as she called it). I sprinkled the board (and rolling pin) with bisquick (not flour, only because the instructions were to use bisquick for the sprinkling/dusting) and turned out my dough and kneaded it for several minutes and it became rather elastic, then I rolled it out. It was about a quarter inch thick I think but it was probably twice as thick as what I see in your pictures which look very thin. I would have liked to have rolled it even thinner but I had already taken up all the space on the cutting board and I was time pressed, and so I cut my strips then cut dumpling pieces at an angled cut. Sometimes I cut through 2 or 3 rows at a time, sometimes one row at a time. They were not all uniform in size but close enough. After finishing that task I gathered them all up into a bowl to transfer over to the pot. While I worked on the dumplings my friend transferred all the hot cooked chicken breasts to a plate to cool for cutting up (and she got out an additional plate for working on/with).
The dumplings were solid, would not stick together, a result of the kneading and rolling out process). I started by dropping them in the pot from my hand but hot water was splashing up so I got to loading up the long slotted spoon with a pile of them and lowered it into the pot and turned them out (they did not stick to each other). I wanted to get them all in at virtually the same time to cook evenly).
After getting that task done I turned to the chicken breasts and took 2 or 3 pieces at a time to the extra plate and sliced and diced into good size chunks. I’d return the processed chunks to the plate with the whole pieces until I’d processed them all, after which I returned the chicken to the pot with the dumplings, scraping in all the little bits fallen from the cutting process before dunking the plates into the hot soapy sink water.
I stirred the pot, turned it from high to the medium high and returned to my relax spot with my laptop and noted the time in notepad. I planned to cook for about 20 minutes. When I saw that it would time out at :37 I altered it to :40 for completion (extra few minutes), and that was completion of ‘active’ cooking time and would let it stand for at least 10 minutes after turning off the heat.
I went in every few minutes, stirred and adjusted the heat, turning it down just another notch or so because it was reducing and thickening and I didn’t want it to burn or scald at the bottom and had to be more vigilant through that last stretch of time. It kept at a steady bubbling boil even as I turned it down as it thickened up. I din’t want it too low either because I needed it to reduce (so the liquid could evaporate some at a pace.)
So, the :40 finally arrived and I went in and switched off the pot, gave it a stir, and that’s when I said to my friend “Did you say you wanted to make mashed (instant) potatoes and corn to go with it?” She’s like “Oh! I forgot about that!” I said, it’s okay, this is the perfect time to do it. This pot needs to set and it should be just about right by time you get done with those.
They’d never had chicken and dumplings before and my friend said (and explained to her children) “It looks so plain but it’s special”. She raved for a while, everyone else was busy eating. Before the meal she was worried about not having enough of the big deep bowls and some people would have to use the smaller regular size bowls i.e. Corelle standard bowl size, which I used, but, the way this dish fills a tummy, I couldn’t possibly eat another bite after I got through with the bowl. It is filling. The leftovers got containered up, just like the spaghetti makings from the day before and both have made quick heat up meals (brunch) Thursday and today (Friday, Valentine’s Day). There was a large full tub of leftover chicken and dumplings on Thursday morning and now there’s about a quarter of that. It made do for dinner, it has stretched, and it works!
Speaking of carrots, celery and onion. I only started making chicken and dumplings again in the past few months (after years) since I started buying boxes of bisquick to make biscuits, pancakes, and dumplings with. I’ve considered a couple times now about adding carrot, celery, and onion but I didn’t want to veer away from the traditional recipe but it didn’t occur to me to use them to enhance my broth flavor and then discard the cooked remnants of the veggies (at least until I read your recipe) so I will be doing it that way in a future batch (when I feel like doing the extra steps).
Also, I’m going to twist my dumplings (noodles) before I add them to the pot next time. I could twist them individually after I cut them, or twist the length of the strip before cutting the dumpling pieces (which would probably be the most efficient method me thinks).
I’ve cut the edges straight, at a slant, and for those worried about thickness, thinness, to be quite honest, it’s only a matter of what you want for dumpling variety, whether the dumpling strip is thinner or thicker, twisted (for fun), or straight, cut at an angle or straight/squared, it will still be a delicious dumpling as long as you prepare your dumpling dough properly.
When I lost my power last week I thought I’d try to cook a tiny pot of dumplings on my Dietz lantern cooker. I didn’t have enough milk to properly moisten the dough (wasn’t using the recipe just making throwing together, I thought I’d be creative and improvise.) I saw a little container of buttery garlic dip for Ceasar’s pizza or bread sticks and thought it might do nicely, but ugg, I had to throw it all out it was gross and inedible and my dumpling dissolved into mush in the pot. I was glad to see that our SouthernGirl (if I got the blog writer’s username right) had already had the experience, which I immediately related to, having had both my experimental failure and big family success (by sticking to the traditional dough recipe and using the milk it called for) in the same week.
Wow, this is such a long post. I hope I haven’t exceeded my character limit.
