Chicken and Dumplings
Chicken and dumplings made with homemade dumplings using freshly milled wheat.
Ingredients
For the Soup
- 1 lb boneless chicken breasts see notes below
- 1 cup onions chopped
- 1 cup carrots diced
- 1 cup celery diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 32 oz chicken stock see notes below
- 1 TB fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tsp pepper
- salt to taste
- 2 TB cornstarch
- 1 can evaporated milk 12 oz can
For the Dumplings
- 2 cups freshly milled soft white wheat flour, milled fine mill about 1.5 cups of wheat berries. Kamut, spelt, and hard white may be used as well.
- 1 TB baking powder
- 1 tsp baking powder yes, you need 1 TB and 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 TB fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 4 TB butter melted
Instructions
For the Soup
- Add chicken, onion, carrots, celery, garlic, stock, thyme, pepper, and salt to big pot.
- Bring to a boil, simmer for about 20-30 minutes until chicken is cooked. (If using already cooked chicken, leave it out during this step! Your veggies need to cook, but not the chicken. Add chicken after veggies have softened).
- When chicken is cooked, remove it from soup and shred with fork OR cut into small cubes.
- Place cornstarch in a bowl, add 2 TB of evaporated milk and stir together to make a slurry. Stir this slurry into the soup along with the rest of the evaporated milk. Stir.
The Dumplings
- While your soup is simmering, make your dumplings. In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, pepper, salt, and thyme together. Make a well in the center and add milk and melted butter in center.
- Mix dough with a wooden spoon until it all comes together and a ball forms. If it's too dry, add more milk. If it's too wet, add a little more flour.
- Cover with plastic wrap or towel to rest until the soup is done.
- After veggies and chicken have been cooked in the soup, keep soup simmering.
- Take your dumpling dough and make small balls about the size or a marble or large marble (they will expand when they cook). If you like bigger dumplings, make it whatever size you like. Roll balls until smooth and drop in simmering soup. *see note below
- Simmer until dumplings are cooked through, anywhere from 15 - 30 minutes depending on how thick your dumplings are. To check for doneness, remove a dumpling and cut it open.
- Serve hot with some delicious bread and enjoy!
Notes
*Instead of chicken breasts and stock, I typically just take one of my own whole chickens and make a stock with it. Then I de-bone the meat to use in the chicken and dumplings and use my own stock!
**If using your own stock, the seasonings in this recipe may vary based on how you made your stock.
***I typically double this recipe so the meat from one chicken works. Otherwise, just add the preferred amount of chicken to soup and save rest of chicken from stock for something else.
****To make these dumplings Southern style the way I grew up, instead of making the dough into balls, heavily flour a work surface. Then roll out dough on floured surface very thin, about 1/4'' thin. Sprinkle more flour, liberally on top of the dough. Using a pizza cutter cut dumplings into little squares about 2x2. Or longer rectangles about 1x2''. Then drop dough into soup as before until cooked. This will take less time since they are thin.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
I was wondering if I can use this dumpling recipe for cornbread dumplings for chili?