Chicken and dumplings * dredging meat * how to remove chicken meat from the bone * making chicken stock

Chicken and Dumplings

All-purpose flour, salt, and pepper (for dredging)

Chicken thighs or quarters, skin removed

1 onion, diced

carrots, chopped

celery, chopped

chicken stock

about ½ c cream or half and half

Dumplings:

1 ¾ c all-purpose flour

¼ c cornmeal (or use 2 c flour instead)

½ tsp baking powder

dash salt

2 Tbsp butter

about ¾ c milk

In a small bowl, mix about ¼ c flour with some salt and pepper. Set aside. Put some oil or butter in the bottom of a large pot and heat to medium-high. Add half the diced onions and saute briefly. Then dredge chicken pieces in seasoned flour and add to the pot. Brown, then remove from pot and put the rest of the onions and the vegetables in the pot instead. Saute for a few minutes, then add plenty of stock (you can top up with water if needed), salt, pepper, and any other seasonings desired. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes. Uncover, remove chicken again, and use two forks to remove meat from bones and shred. Return meat to pot and add about half a cup of cream or half and half.

For dumplings, combine dry ingredients and cut in butter. Add milk just to combine, roll out thin, cut into strips, and drop strips into pot. Allow to simmer another ten minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make chicken and dumplings.

Uh, yeah, I disappeared for the better part of a year. Sorry about that. Last August I realized that I didn’t have time to do two podcasts so I just stopped this one. But you know what I have right now in plentitude? Time. Yes, like many people I am working from home and social distancing and self-isolating and everything else to help stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus. But what I am mostly doing is a lot of cooking. So I thought it might be nice to resurrect Real Life Cooking, at least for now. Let’s call this season two.

I can’t promise a regular publishing schedule, but we’ll see. Also, for me it’s editing episodes that takes so much time, so I’m going to go light on taking out breaths and room noises and so forth. I don’t think most people are bothered by things like that anyway, just me. So let’s go.

Chicken and dumplings is a great way to stretch a small amount of meat into a really big meal that’s also tasty and filling, and it doesn’t require any expensive or hard to find ingredients. You will need some flour, which can be hard to come by at the moment. You can use any kind of flour, though, from cake flour to bread flour, so just use what you have on hand.

Not only that, but I’m going to explain how you make stock in this episode. It’s time consuming but, yeah. Time is no longer in short supply, but chicken stock is.

For this recipe you will need a large pot, the larger the better. I made this recipe three times in my first month of quarantine and the last time I got out my biggest pot, doubled the recipe, and made a ton of really good food that I can eat all week. You’ll also need a small bowl, a large mixing bowl, and a clean dry surface to roll out the dumplings. If you want to make stock too, you’ll need another large pot, but how large depends on how much stock you want to make.

The first thing to do is chop your vegetables. Scrape or peel the carrots, rinse, and chop into pennies. Toss the carrot tops, any rejected pieces, and even the peels if you like into another big pot for stock. Cut the tops and bottoms off your celery stalks and toss the cut off pieces into the stock pot for later too. Basically you just want to use the thick green part of the celery stalk, not the skinny tops that sometimes have little leaves, and not the