Directions: |
Directions:Discard the neck, giblets etc, be sure to check both ends of the chicken to make sure you got all that stuff out. Rinse well in cold water, place in soup pot. Add water, onion and a little salt, the poultry seasoning and some black pepper.
Bring to a boil, cover and simmer at least two hours, chicken should be almost ready to fall apart. Remove chicken to platter or large bowl to cool. It may fall apart as you take it out of the pot, just use a slotted spoon to make sure you get all the parts out of the broth. Leave lid off and let the broth continue to cook for about 15 minutes to reduce it a bit.
Bring broth back to almost boiling, and add the milk. One tip on the milk; pouring ice cold milk into hot broth can make the milk curdle, so you can either slightly heat the milk in a sauce pan, or slowly add some broth to the milk, to heat it up a bit, before adding it to the pot. This is known as tempering, something I learned about the hard way.
Mix about 3 tbsp. flour, and two tbsp. oil, in a small bowl, until you get a paste, then add some of the broth mixture to that, until you can pour it. Add that to broth in soup pot, stirring continuously as you pour it in. This is to thicken the broth. Cover, and keep on simmer. Be sure to taste the broth before you add the dumplings and add more salt and pepper if you want. As always, I kinda go heavy on the pepper, but you make it how you want. Besides, you can season each portion.
Meanwhile, as soon as chicken is cool enough to handle, debone the chicken, removing all skin, etc. Just tear the meat into pieces, you don’t have to shred it up really small, unless you want to. I kind of like larger pieces, and the chicken will tend to shred when it gets added back to the pot anyway; set chicken aside.
Take biscuits and cut or tear them into small pieces, about 4 per biscuit should be about right. Add them a few at a time to the broth. They’ll float at first, and you may have to stir a bit to make room to get them all added. When you do stir, do it carefully. I just kinda poke them aside with a spoon then drop in more biscuits, til I’m done.
Okay, here’s the part that I can never decide which is best. You can put the lid on and let the dumplings cook for about 15 minutes and then add the chicken, and cook a bit longer. Or, you can immediately add the chicken, cover and cook for 15 to 30 minutes. |
This recipe for Chicken and Dumplings is from