Chicken and Dumplings

This recipe has been in my family for years.  Its a great comfort food.  Its something you can make for a large crowd.  Its easy on the budget and surprisingly easy to make.  It feeds our family of six for about three days! Here's what you'll need:

A very large stock pot
1 whole fryer chicken cut up
pepper to taste
salt to taste
1 cup of shortening
2 cups of flour
2 tsps of salt
1 cup of milk
2 beaten eggs
chicken bouillon cubes

For the stock, I do a plain broth.  You can add carrots, celery and/or onion if you wish.  But to me, then it seems more like a soup.  Place your cut up chicken in the large pot.  Cover with water.  Sprinkle in salt and pepper and add chicken bouillon cubes.  I typically use three and I go pretty heavy on it as it's a lot of water and chicken to season.  Bring to a boil and cook chicken all the way through.

While your chicken is cooking, start working on your dumplings.

In a large mixing bowl combine flour and salt; cut in shortening well.  Beat eggs and milk together and add to the flour mixture.  Mix well and turn dough out onto a floured surface.  Lightly knead the dough.  Dough will be sticky.  Roll dough out into a large rectangle about an 1/8 inch thick.  Then, with a pizza cutter, make several cuts vertically and horizontally.  This will give you around 200 one inch by one inch dumplings.  Transfer dumplings onto a plate and chill in the fridge for one hour.

 

After your chicken is thoroughly cooked, remove from pot and debone; discarding the bones and skin.  Let stock come to a boil.  Add meat back to the pot and season your stock again if need be.  Make sure stock is at a rolling boil and drop dumplings one by one into the pot.  Dropping dumplings all at once will result in one very large dumpling.  Dumplings will start to rise to the top of the water when they're cooked.  Reduce heat, simmer covered for 20 minutes.

 

 

 

 

This is what your pot should look like before the simmer.  Dumplings may "drop" further into the stock after 20 minutes. 

 

I wasn't able to get a "final" photo as these went pretty fast!!

 

Enjoy! :)

 

FOB Frahlich