Table of Contents

Introduction:

Chicken and dumplings is comfort food, the comfort food — cooked chicken, chunky veggies, and fluffy dumplings in a deeply savoury broth. A rustic version of this that is so close to home cooking, great for family and friends, cozy dinners together. A step by step guide to making this classic dish.

Basic Information

Chicken and dumplings is a dish that I didn’t grow up eating but when I eat it now as an adult I somehow gush with Nostalgia it’s something about the combination of dried herbs and biscuits that smell is baked into my brain as Mom food and it makes me feel warm and content in a profound way so today I’m going to show you guys how to make a really beautiful version of this dish for yourselves at home to get started I’ll grab six boneless skinless chicken thighs over whole roasted chicken.

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, sliced
3 celery stalks, sliced
2 lbs chicken thighs/breasts, cubed
1 cup milk
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Let Start!

Texturally thighs deliver pretty much the same result as a whole roasted bird but they cook a lot faster and they leave out the possibility of overcooked breast meat now to prep these thighs for the pot I’ll season them with a strong pinch of salt maybe a half teaspoon per side then I’ll give them a strong pinch of black pepper as well then I’ll flip them over and hit them on the backside and once these thighs are all seasoned up I’ll shoot them over to a 400f oven to roast them for about 30 minutes.

While that cooks. I’ll cut my veggies, next I’ll grab one large white onion and give it. what I call the week night dice to do it. I sliced the onions four to five times from pole to pole then. I turned it 90° and sliced it thinly perpendicular to those original slices this is an easier simpler way to cut an onion for more rustic dishes where a perfect dice isn’t required in total. I need about 300 G next I’ll slice three to four stocks of celery tip to tip three times then I’ll turn it 90° and give it a mediums dice.

I want 150 g of celery next is carrots I need 150 g of those diced to the same size as the celery that I’ll grab a medium fennel bulb cut it in half then nip out.The Woody core near the stem end from there I’ll slice it four to five times top to bottom turn it 90° and chop it into a size that’s close to the rest of this mirror Po and once. I’ve got 150 g of fennel cut up. I’ll grab four to five garlic cloves and just smooch them into the bowl with everything else. I’m not worried about keeping the garlic separate because everything’s going to be cooking together over low heat and it’s not going to burn back in my oven these thighs have gotten their 30 minutes of roasting so I’ll pull them out as you can see in 30 minutes these thighs got cooked all the way through and then some they’re actually well beyond 180f and in my opinion that’s a good thing weirdly with thighs the more you cook them the more collagen inside turns to gelatin and the more tender.

They become it’s pretty counterintuitive now I’m going to let these thighs rests then grab a heavy bottom pot that’s about 6 and 3/4 quarts deep then drop it on the stove over medium heat and once this thing’s hot. I’ll add in a whole stick of butter or 115 G and give it a melt behind that in goes all my veggies a strong pinch of salt and then. I’ll stir to get a sweat going on what is a sweat exactly well sweating is a cooking process that gently.

Cooks the vegetables causing them to release their moisture and soften without browning while also intensifying their flavor this is different from sautéing where higher heat is used to achieve some kind of caramelization and since this is going to be a light and creamy dish dark roast sautéed flavors aren’t going to be welcome they would just muddy up the flavors and after about 6 to8 minutes of stirring this often over medium heat these vegetables are properly sweat so next in goes 135 G of all-purpose flour and then I’ll stir that in to get a r started and if you’re gluten-free a decent cup for cup flour should totally work for this Rue or later on when we’re making dumplings and once my flour is stirred into this buttery veg with no lumps I’ll add in 100 G of drinkable but not expensive dry white wine once that’s in I’ll quickly scrape and deglaze the bottom of this pot to get rid of any flowy bits that might be sticking then I’ll cook this wine for 30 seconds to remove its raw. Edge next in goes 1,200 G of store-bought chicken broth and 100 G of heavy cream by the way.

If you don’t want to buy cream just for this recipe you can use 800 G of stock and 400 G of milk the final dish won’t be as creamy but it’ll still be quite good next in goes three sprigs of thyme a couple of bay leaves then my secret ingredient 2 G of poultry seasoning this stuff just makes dishes taste like it was cooked by a mom in a good way it’s pure Nostalgia and it obviously enhances chicken flavor dishes quite a lot speaking of chicken I need to cut the stuff that we roasted earlier real quick.So that I can get it into the pot before we cover everything with dumplings to break it down I’ll cut it into strips then chop it roughly I want pieces that are medium to small and kind of ire-regular almost as if they were rotisserie meat that we picked off the bone then chopped down this more heterogeneous texture just works a lot better than large cubes of chicken in my opinion and once this chicken is all chopped down I’ll slide it into the pot along with 200 g of frozen peas from here I’ll give this whole pot a stir to combine while also scraping the bottom.

Make sure the thickened liquid isn’t getting stuck it turns out that flour thickened liquids get really grapy on the bottom of the pot and burn easily so to prevent that from here on out I recommend keeping your heat on medium low or lower now I’m going to let this simmer for 5 minutes while I make my dumpling dough and thank seed for sponsoring this video seeds ds01 is a clinically and scientifically studied pre and probiotic that I’ve been taking for about 3 years now and I think the fact that I’ve been taking it every morning for the last few years has allowed me to get away with being kind of a bad boy when it comes to eating foods that aren’t particularly gut healthy generally I try to get plenty of fiber and vegetables in my diet but when there’s a big pot of chicken and dumplings around all week I’m going to eat that and normally that could be a problem but I’ve got DSO one backing me up by helping .

Actually support my gut health and keep me pretty regular plus there’s strains of bacteria inside the probiotic that help with your skin health and your heart health when you first sign up for a seed subscription they’ll send you this refillable glass jar and travel vial then all your refills after that come in this sweet compostable safe pouch so if you guys are interested in having award-winning Oprah approved BMS in the year 2024 use my link down in the description and use code Brian 24 to get 25% off your first seed order thank you seed now to make this dumpling dough I’ll combine 360 G of all-purpose flour 8 G of salt 12 G of baking powder yes that’s a lot of baking powder but the extra lift here is going to help give us Cloud level dumpers in just a second then I’ll add in 4 G of black pepper and then grab my wet ingredients from the stove and stream those in while stirring gently to combine in the pot here I’ve got 75 G of melted butter and 340 G of milk I warmed them together in the pot.

But never let things get hot and once I’ve got this buttery milk poured into my flour here I’ll stir a few more times to combine but I’m not going to over stir we want pretty much zero gluten formation in this dough so barely combine it any more stirring in these dumplings will be chewy and tough instead of flaky and light back at the stove my chicken mixture is looking really beautiful but there’s one more step before dumpling time now before we start cooking the dumpers in our chicken stuff we need to taste it for salt and depending on how much you added to your chicken before you put it in the oven you may or may not need to add more at this point so I’m just going to give it a little slurp that tastes pretty good but there’s not going to be an opportunity to season this from this point forward cut there’s going to be a roof of dumplings on top so I’m adding one more strong pinch I’m going to give that a stir that’s perfect next I’ll drop in 12 to 16 dumplings.

The number that you get kind of depends on how large you want to make them but in my opinion the perfect size dumpling is made by two teaspoons and to get a dumpling properly formed here I prefer to quince them quince is just a fancy word for passing the dough back and forth between two spoons to roughly round it off this way the dumplings are all just the same size and shape and they cook in roughly the same amount of time and once I’ve got just about 16 dumps dropped into my pot here I’ll lower the heat pop on a lid and then set a timer for 15 minutes 15 minutes later as you can see these.

Dumplings have grown a lot they kind of expand to perfectly fill the space available to them to test for dens here I like to scoop one out and cut into it just to make sure it’s not gluey on the inside and that is not gluey at all its super fluffy looking and cooked all the way through back at the pot the final texture of the chicken mix should be thicker than creamy chicken soup but thinner than sausage gravy but I lean on the thicker side personally because I think that’s a little bit more comforting now to Plate.