Chicken & Dumplings
Ingredients
Chicken & Soup
- 2 chicken breasts (cut into chunks)
- salt & pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- ½ cup butter (unsalted)
- 5 large carrots (peeled and chopped)
- 6 stalks of celery (chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (minced)
- 1 yellow onion (diced)
- ⅓ cup plain flour
- 1½ cups chicken stock
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary (minced)
- 3 fresh sage leaves (minced)
- 3 sprigs fresh thyme (stripped from stems)
Biscuit Dumplings
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1½ tsp sugar
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- ¼ cup unsalted, cold butter (cubed small)
- ½ cup buttermilk (if you do not have butter milk, simply add ½ tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to a measuring cup, adding enough milk to make ½ cup – let sit for 5 minutes)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 450°F
- Heat 1 tablespoons of olive oil in a dutch oven or oven-safe pot
- Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper
- Add chicken to dutch oven and cook until browned and cooked through, about 10 minutes
- Remove from heat and set aside
- Add a little more olive oil to the pan if needed
- Cook minced garlic until just fragrant and then add onion, cooking until onion is translucent, about 5-10 minutes
- Add carrots and half of the celery, cooking until veggies are just tender
- Remove veggies from Dutch oven and set aside with chicken
- Add 2 tablespoons of butter and allow to melt to make base
- Add remaining celery and cook until tender
- Incorporate flour, stirring until completely combined (the entire mixture should look wet)
- Add chicken stock, remaining butter and milk. Cook until thick, about 5 minutes
- Add chicken, veggies and herbs and cook for another 15 minutes
- For the biscuit dumplings, combine dry ingredients and then incorporate cold butter by squeezing the cupes into the flour until it resembles corn meal
- Add buttermilk
- Make dollops of biscuit dough onto the top of the chicken and soup and then bake in the oven until biscuit dumplings are cooked through and golden brown, about 15 minutes. Enjoy!
Chicken and dumplings makes the perfect, go-to comfort food during the fall and winter. I love to create my own cream of celery base as opposed to using cans because the flavor is so much better and there isn’t much of a cost or time difference. I also use my Sunday Morning Biscuit recipe for the dumplings – any chance I can find to make these biscuits I take!
Start by cooking the chicken. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a Dutch oven, season the chicken and cook until browned and cooked through. Remove the chicken and set aside. If you have leftover chicken or rotisserie chicken, that works great too!
If the Dutch oven is looking dry, add a little more olive oil and then the minced garlic. Cook the garlic for just a minute or two until fragrant and then add onion. Cook the onion until it begins to appear translucent. Stir in chopped carrots and about half of the chopped celery. Cook until veggies are just tender and then set aside with the chicken and begin working on th ebase.
Melt some butter and add the remaining celery, cooking until tender. Then add plain flour to create something of a roux – this will keep everything thick and creamy. Stir everything around until there are no longer traces of dry flour. Mix in chicken stock, remaining butter and milk and stir and cook for a couple minutes. Toss in the veggies and chicken and allow to simmer for at least fifteen minutes.
To finish off the chicken and dumplings, work on the biscuits. Sift together all dry ingredients and then work in small cubes of cold butter by squeezing the cubes into the flour mixture until you get a grainy, corn-meal consistency. Mix in buttermilk and then layer dollops of the biscuit batter on the chicken and veggies and bake at 450°F until the biscuits are done and golden brown.
Sometimes I’ll get splatters that pop out of the Dutch oven so I’ll usually put a baking sheet or layer of foil on the rack below the Dutch oven while cooking. This recipe makes great leftovers – I hope you enjoy!