Monday, April 16, 2012

Cousin Phyllis' secret Chicken n' Dumpling recipe

These are the most delicious Chicken & Dumplings. They are every bit as good as my momma's. And my mom knows how to cook good ole southern food.
Sorry Cousin Phyllis, your recipe for Chicken & Dumplings is too good not to share. Just keep your son, Randy, away from this blog and he will never know your secret.
What you will need:
1 whole Chicken (I put the whole thing in a dutch oven the day before, bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 3 hours. If you don't like dark meat, use bone-in chicken breast. I used 4 and it really was too much meat. Put some of the meat aside for another dish.)
Add salt to taste. Remember, you can always add more, if needed.
1 package of Grands Buttermilk Frozen Biscuits (this is NOT canned biscuits. You find these with the frozen rolls in the frozen food section. See photo of pkg below).
I, also, have a couple of cans of chicken broth on hand, in case I need more broth.
The day before:
Boil the chicken the day before and once it has cooled, put it in the fridge. I like to do this so that I can skim off all the fat, debone it and strain all the gunk out of the broth.
Dumpling making day:
Set out your biscuits to thaw.

Defat, debone and strain your broth.


This is my broth. I add lots of coarse black pepper to the broth. Bring it to a rolling boil.
You really need a thick dutch oven for this. If you use a thin pan, it will burn on the bottom.
Add more of the canned broth to this, if needed. I added a can to this, since it was not enough once I had removed the chicken. Notice that the chicken is not in the broth pot.

While I am waiting for the broth to come to a rolling boil, I take my thawed out biscuits and on a floured surface, I roll out two at a time. I roll them out as thin as possible. Notice the size difference in the rolled out one and the one that isn't.

I roll them out by using a  small roller. And I cut them into strips with a pizza cutter.

Once the broth has come to a rolling boil, I drop my little pieces of dough into the broth. I do this one biscuit at a time. I, always, make sure that they are pushed under the broth (with a wooden spoon) and allowed to rise to the top, or float to the top, on their own. I roll out the next biscuit and using the wooden spoon, I push aside the previous dumplings to uncover a clear broth area and begin dropping the next set of pieces of dough.
Repeat this until you use all of the biscuits.
Once you have used all the dough up, add your chicken to the mix, bring it back to full heat, turn down the flame, cover it with a lid and simmer for 30 minutes.

Honestly, this makes a huge batch! I always use this opportunity to take some to church friends who are in need of a meal or have a group of southern-food-loving buddies over. These heat up great, too.
Now, go out and get your ingredients!
Sorry again, cousin Phyllis.....................these are just too good to not share.

3 comments:

Becky Arnold said...

I LOVE chicken and dumplings! This looks so very yummy.

Delighted Hands said...

hmmmm, I can smell it already! Thanks for sharing it!

Barb R. said...

Never thought to use frozen biscuits for dumplings. Brilliant! MUST give it a try...soon!