Chicken and Dumplings? Chicken Pot Pie?

When you are looking for great chicken recipes you have to consider chicken and dumplings (chicken pot pie). It is a comfort food that almost everyone loves.

I grew up about 20 minutes outside of Philiadelphia, in Bucks Country, Pa. Now, saying that, I have to also say that I only lived there for 7 years but it was those “Wonder Years” and some of the best years of my life. We did a lot on the weekends, packing up my best friend, Chris (who is now a premier, famous artist and a way cool person) and heading for places like Dutch Wonderland, Hershey, and Ringing Rocks campground. Lots of travel means lots of eating out and one of my very favorite restaurants was a Pennsylvania Dutch place that served the best apple fritters in the known universe in baskets with your meal. Yeah. You know how you get chips at Don Pablo’s? Well, imagine a never empty basket of warm, sugar dusted apple fritters.
Heaven.

Besides these amazing fritters they had something that is called pot pie in Pennsylvania and in Texas is known as Chicken and Dumplings. Whichever you prefer to call it, it is good stuff…winter warming, bone heating, chill chasing comfort food. Good stuff.
Too thick to be a soup and too creamy to be a stew, this chicken recipe is a mosaic of flavor and texture; rich, creamy, chewy…perfect. Serve it with some homemade rolls to sop up the sauce and an iceberg wedge with thousand island dressing and a little bacon sprinkled on top. Finish with a warm slice of apple pie topped with a just-beginning-to-melt-from-the-heat scoop of vanilla ice cream. Then and only then you can lean back in your chair, sigh, and unbutton your pants…
Because you are gonna be satiated.

This is one of the best, easiest chicken recipes ever.If you make your own broth refrigerate it over night and skim the chicken fat off the top. This gives the noodles an extra burst of flavor….so good! Oh… you can also pitch everything into a slow  cooker and let it go for 8 hours. Love mushrooms? Add them!

Call it chicken and dumplings, call it chicken pot pie… but make it. You won’t be sorry.

Chicken Pot Pie/ Chicken and Dumplings

• 3 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter or rendered chicken fat
• 1 cup cold chicken broth
• 1 lbs boneless chicken breast
• 1 lb chicken thighs (bone in)
• 1 quart chicken broth
• 2 quarts water
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 stalks celery, chopped
• 3 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1/4 butter
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh sage
• 1/4 cup chopped thyme
• Salt and pepper

1. Mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. Cut in chicken fat or butter until mixture resembles crumbs.
3. Stir in water until the mixture holds together.
4. Shape into a ball and let rest for at least 30 minutes.
5. Rub chicken thighs with olive oil. Roast in a 450F degreee oven for 10 minutes on each side.
6. Saute the celery, carrots, and onion in a little olive oil in a dutch oven until the vegetables begin to get tender.
7. Add chicken breast, chicken thighs, wine, water, and chicken broth.
8. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 1 hour.
9. Remove bone and skin from the chicken thighs.
10. Meanwhile roll the dough until it is  1/8 of an inch thick.
11. Cut into 2″x2″ squares
12. Add the squares gently to the simmering broth.
13. Add the sage and thyme and simmer for fifteen minutes, until dumplings are done.

Serves 8

images: (c) marye audet 2011

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