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When you ask someone from the South what a good comfort food is, you'll most likely hear chicken and dumplins' for sure. There are SO many recipes out there for this dish. My mama made this a lot when I was growing up. We used canned biscuits for the longest time too for our dumplings. They work just fine and taste great too. We prefer the butter flavored if we buy store-bought and don't get the flakey or you'll have no dumplins' left! They'll fall apart before you're ready to serve. Ask us how we know.
ANYWHO LOL
Over the years we have enjoyed learning to cook together. The more we've enjoyed cooking new things and trying new recipes, the more we have found ourselves wanting to make things from scratch. This is really for no other reason than we really do love cooking and don't mind the work that goes into incredible meals but also because we can pronounce all of the ingredients vs all of the chemicals used in so many food items. We have been striving to make better food choices for the family.
We started making homemade biscuits a couple of years ago and we actually tried to make this dish with our homemade biscuits but the dumplins' fell apart. We couldn't figure out how to make them stay stuck together through the cooking process. It wasn't until we watched a YouTube video from Kent Rollins - ("Cowboy Kent Rollins"), and we highly recommend watching him, where he made his homemade biscuits but he added one ingredient that made all the difference!
FUN FACT - The only difference between a biscuit and pie crust is the leavening. Biscuits are leavened with baking powder and a pie crust is made without it. You can buy self-rising flour, but, for budget purposes it makes more sense to just create your own (we'll explain how here) and still have the rest of your flour for other dishes than to buy self-rising flour that you hardly use anyway. Just a helpful tip.
So what was that one ingredient you need to add to biscuit dough for dumplins' to stay dumplins'? Vinegar. True story. It chemically helps the dough hold together though the cooking process. (Thank you Kent!)
WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
A whole chicken - Leave bones in and skin on. We basically spatchcocked the chicken, quartered it and then placed in pot to boil with 1TBSP of salt.
1TBSP of Better Than Bouillon (optional) to add to your broth
Salt, Pepper and Garlic Powder (season to your liking)
TO MAKE DUMPLINS':
1 stick of unsalted butter
3 C of Self-Rising Flour
1 C of buttermilk (cold)
1 cap full of vinegar
(To make your all purpose flour into your own self rising flour for every 1 cup of all purpose flour you'll add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt. (See that wasn't so hard!))
WHAT YOU DO:
Add your whole chicken to a stock pot with 1TBSP of salt and bring to boil then let simmer until fully cooked. You'll only add enough water to cover the chicken by about a 1/2 inch above it. This is so your broth is concentrated. That's where most of the flavor will be!
To prepare your dumplins' you will get your self-rising flour mixture in a large mixing bowl (your all purpose flour, baking powder and salt) and mix together.
Cut 1 stick of butter into 1/2 inch pieces and add to flour. Use a pastry cutter to mash up the butter so that the mixture is now crumbly and no large pieces of butter are left.
Sprinkle some flour onto your counter top and take all of the dough mixture crumbles out of the bowl and place in a big ol pile. You'll knead this into one smooth dough ball. Wrap this up with cling wrap and place in fridge until you are ready to use.
Once the chicken is fully cooked you'll remove from broth and set aside to cool. You can use a strainer to strain the larger pieces out of the broth as well and set that aside.
After the chicken is cooled, shred it and place back into the broth. You can begin warming the broth back up to a simmer because once all the shredded chicken is in the broth it's time to cook the dumplins'
If you need to add more water? Go ahead! Totally up to you. This is where you can add more water and add some bouillon too. Don't be afraid to taste the broth and season to your liking at this point.
Now that the chicken is settling into the broth you'll remove dumplin' dough from the fridge and start pinching off pieces to roll into a ball the size of whatever you prefer. You'll want them typically 1-2 inches. They will look all stuck together at the top of your stock pot but as they heat up and begin to cook they will start sinking to the bottom. Just give them a good stir every 5-6 minutes. You'll know the dumplins' are ready when you stick a toothpick in and it comes out clean.
ENJOY!!!
The Wadsworth Crew