Chicken and Dumplings

Tonight I chose to fix chicken and dumplings for dinner. It is one of my family's favorite. An added bonus, it is fairly quick and easy. Total prep and cooking time is 40 minutes.

Ingredients:
4 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
4-6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, washed and trimmed of fat

Add the water and salt to a large pot (at least 4 quarts), and bring to a boil over high heat. Carefully add the chicken and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat and allow to simmer, uncovered, over medium-high heat for 15 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, prepare your dumplings. For this you have 2 choices:

1) make dumplings from 1 roll of refrigerator biscuits by opening the tube and tearing each biscuit into 3 pieces, set aside.

or

2) make dumplings from scratch with the following recipe (or a biscuit recipe of your own)

In a large bowl combine:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Mix well.

Add 1/3 cup shortening (the best way to measure shortening, that I have found, is to fill a 2 cup measuring cup to the 2/3 cup line with COLD water. Spoon out the shortening and place it into the measuring cup. When the water line is at the 1 cup line, stop adding shortening. Carefully dump the water into the sink and then drop the shortening into the flour mixture. This makes for a super-simple clean up of the measuring cup).

Next add 2 Tbsp butter (or margarine) to the flour mixture. Mix the flour, shortening and butter together with your hands until it is lumpy and very like the consistency of cornmeal.

Finally, pour in 3/4 cup of buttermilk (or 3/4 of a cup of milk with 1 Tbsp white vinegar). Mix well and form a ball with the dough and set aside.

If you used the second choice, you should be about ready to cut apart/tear apart the chicken. When I use option 1, I get to field about 500 questions from my 3 inquisitive little minds.

Next steps:

Remove the chicken from the pot. Leave the pot on the stove and lower the heat to medium. Carefully (it's very hot) tear the thighs apart into strips. I have found that using 2 forks works really well for tearing the thighs apart into pieces.

Replace the chicken into the pot and add the following:

1 large can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup chopped carrots (I used 1 cup of frozen corn tonight as I didn't realize I was out of carrots)
1 cup peas (frozen is fine)
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Stir well and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low.

Now it is time to add your dumplings. If you chose option 1, just place the biscuit pieces on top of the chicken in the pot. Don't worry if they touch.

If you chose dumpling option 2, drop the biscuit mix by the teaspoon full onto the chicken in the pot.

After the soup starts to bubble and simmer again, reduce the heat to low and cover the pot. Allow to cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Remove the cover and allow to cook another 10 minutes.

Simple, yummy, easy and all in 40 minutes. This recipe makes enough to feed myself, my husband, our 3 children with enough leftover for lunch the next day.

My children love to help me in the kitchen and this is a good recipe for them to help with. They enjoy adding the veggies and soup and dropping the biscuits on the top. They are also getting to that age where they can help stir, under close supervision and guidance, so that hot soup doesn't go flying across the room or covering the stove. The more the kids help in preparing and choosing the meals, the better they like it... even when there are little green peas in the bowl.