Chicken and Dumplings!

Last night, I made chicken and dumplings, and my housemates love it. I'm pretty pleased. Seriously, they say it was everything they had hoped for. I adapted this recipe from Cooking Light. I had to change some of the ingredients and improvise as I went. The following is my version.


Chicken and Dumplings

Serves 6

Soup Ingredients:
2 tsp olive oil
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1 1/2 cups sliced celery
1 cup diced onion
2 garlic cloves
1 Quart Chicken Stock (our was homemade, I'm guessing a quart? Might have been more. It doesn't really matter)
1 tbs ground sage
1 tsp dill
1 Tbs basil
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup water

Dumpling Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbs chopped fresh or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
2 tbs baking powder
pinch of salt
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
1 large egg

Directions:

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the chicken and cook until brown on all sides. Remove the chicken from the pot (it's a good idea to drain off some of the fat at this point), and then add the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, or until vegetables are fragrant. Add in the stock, scrapping the bottom of the pan to get all the cooked and delicious bits. Add in the salt and the herbs, then lower the heat and simmer the soup.

At this point, you should make the dumplings. Measure out the flour into a bowl, then add in the rosemary, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the butter using a pastry blender. Stir in the buttermilk and egg. You should have something that looks like a wet, shaggy biscuit dough.

Back to the soup! So take the 1/4 flour and mix it with water. Stir the resulting grayish goo (it's not the most appetizing thing in the world) into the soup. Bring the heat back to medium and let it simmer for 5 minutes or so. It should thicken a bit. Now, the fun part. Reduce the heat to medium low, and scoop the dumpling dough into the soup, a tablespoon at a time. Mine were bigger because I'm lazy. Cover the pot, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Ladle into bowls and eat. Then make your roommates clean the kitchen.