Recipe For Chicken And Dumplings

Mama's been making this same recipe for chicken and dumplings for over 30 years without the first complaint!



If you don't like dark meat, you can just use 3 or 4 chicken breasts. You will need to knead the dough a little more than you do for biscuits so that it will hold together when you put it in the pot and make sure that the broth is just gently simmering or your dumplings will fall apart.

1 whole fryer chicken
3 stalks of celery
2 carrots
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons of chicken base

For the Dumplings:

2 cups of self-rising flour,
plus up to another cup for kneading
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup of buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten

Here's what you need to do:

Put whole chicken in large pot with celery, carrots, onion, salt, pepper and chicken base. Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until chicken falls off the bone (about 2 hours). Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. Remove and discard the vegetables.

Cut the shortening into the flour until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Mix together buttermilk and egg. Add to flour mixture and mix until everything is wet. Mixture will be sticky.

Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface and knead in enough flour so that the dough comes together into a soft ball.

Roll dough out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut into 1" strips and then into squares. (It's okay if there is still a lot of raw flour sticking to the dough, this will help to thicken the broth).

Bring broth back up to where it is just simmering and drop in the dumplings a few at a time. Gently use a spoon to push the dumpling into the broth. Simmer 10 minutes uncovered then cover and simmer another 10 minutes.

Pull the chicken off of the bone. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and return to pot.

Enjoy your chicken and dumplings!

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