Chicken and Dumplings

My mom came down with a cold yesterday, and with the weather finally cooling down after Southern California's record-setting freak heat wave this month (90 degrees in November is too much even for us), I thought it would be the perfect time to make chicken and dumplings.

For this recipe, I insist on using bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts and not boneless skinless. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are way too easy to overcook and have almost no flavor. They also won't give you a crucial ingredient, caramelized roast chicken drippings. This is what will give you a rich, dark soup broth. Also, boneless skinless chicken breasts are more expensive, and the skin and bones get tossed later anyway.

Now, there are different ways of making this dish. Some people make a hearty soup, which is the most common, while others make a creamy stew. Some people make dumplings that are flat, thick and cut into wide noodles, while others like their dumplings to be chewy little dough puffs. For my purposes, this will be a rich and delicious chicken soup with little buttermilk cloud dumplings that are dropped into the hot soup, then float to the top to steam and puff up. This simple recipe for deeply flavorful chicken soup can also be made with egg noodles if you're not the dumpling type and prefer chicken noodle soup. But, because I am the dumpling type, I'm going to present you with my recipe for chicken and dumpling soup! This recipe features the herb mixture known as herbes de Provence, which I highly recommend you keep on hand for this and other poultry dishes. It's divine! And as with all recipes, I recommend that you read the entire recipe before you get started.


Ingredients:

1 package of 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breast halves
2 32oz cartons of your preferred chicken broth (64oz total)
3 large carrots
1 sweet onion
3 celery stalks
flat leaf Italian parsley (optional)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp. herbes de Provence or a mixture of dried thyme, rosemary, and marjoram
kosher salt
black pepper
olive oil



Preheat your oven to 375F or 190C. Place chicken breast halves in a large roasting pan. Drizzle each chicken breast with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil, just enough to coat both sides of each breast. Lightly dust both sides of the chicken breasts with kosher salt and ground black pepper. You will want to sprinkle the seasonings from up high, because you will get a more even coating on the meat. Place the chicken breasts into the oven for 45-50 minutes, remove when skin is golden brown and blistered. Let chicken breasts rest. YOU MUST reserve the drippings from the roasting pan. If you do not reserve the drippings then I can't help you when it comes to having really robust flavor in your soup! The drippings are worth their weight in gold!

While your chicken cools, begin dicing your vegetables. Slice the carrots into bite-sized coins that will fit in a soup spoon, and dice your onion and celery into bite-sized cubes. In a large dutch oven or soup pot, sautee the onions, carrots and celery in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Remember to give the veggies a light dusting of kosher salt at this point, and stir every couple of minutes to prevent over-browning.

When the chicken breasts have cooled enough to touch them, peel the skin from the meat and remove the rib bones and any remaining breast bone from the breasts; discard the skin and bones. Using a large knife, cut your chicken breast meat into cubes that are between 1/2 inch and 1 inch size. Alternatively, you can tear the chicken into bite-sized pieces by hand. I prefer to cut it. You will notice by the end of cubing your 4 roasted chicken breasts that there will be A LOT of chicken meat! You could easily get away with only using the meat from 3 chicken breasts and bag your extra chicken to save for a salad another time, if you like.

Add 2 cups of water to the roasting pan, which should still have your golden brown drippings. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up as much of the drippings as you can, making sure the water becomes golden brown with all of that caramelized goodness. THIS is pure concentrated chicken flavor, and there really is no substitute for delivering knockout flavor to your soup! Reserve this liquid.

After about 10 minutes of cooking, your vegetables should be cooked, with the celery and onions taking on a more translucent look and the carrots becoming tender. Add your chicken meat to the pot right on top of the veggies, then add your reserved liquid from the roasting pan, which should be dark and cloudy. Add the broth, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 tablespoon herbes de Provence, and 3 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley. As with all dried herbs, be sure to rub the herbes de Provence between your hands to further pulverize the herbs until you can smell the essential oils. Taste the soup broth for salt and add more if needed. Bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat. TIP: If you over-salt your soup (oh no!), you can, to a point, correct it with a little bit of brown sugar - but not too much, or it will be sweet, which you don't want. Ain't nobody got time for sweet chicken soup. Another trick to take some of the salt out of something is to add a peeled potato, then remove said potato before serving. But your best bet is to continually taste your food and add salt little by little so that you don't get in this predicament in the first place. 

While you're waiting for your soup to heat up, prepare the dumpling batter. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon herbes de Provence, and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley. Then, crack the egg into a liquid measuring cup, then add enough buttermilk to come to the 1 cup line. You may notice a little yellow fleck here and there in the buttermilk, and that's okay, and normal, and I like to think of them as little high fives from Jesus. Beat the egg into the buttermilk, then add your wet mixture to your dry mixture. Stir with a spoon until combined; if not wet enough, add a couple of tablespoons of buttermilk. On the other hand, sometimes I need to add an extra tablespoon or two of flour, but start with the one cup first. The mixture should resemble a thick, fluffy batter that borders on dough, but too wet to actually knead. Get it? Confusing, I know. This is the kind of thing that just takes practice. 

When your soup is piping hot and bubbling and your dumpling batter is ready, begin dropping rounded teaspoonfuls of the dumpling batter into the soup. Use another teaspoon to scrape the sticky batter from the spoon. Each spoonful should float back to the top of the soup, and you can drop about 10 small spoonfuls of dumpling batter into the soup depending on the pot you use. If these drops of batter seem small, don't worry - they will at least DOUBLE in size when they're done! 

After you've dropped in all the dumplings you can fit, lower the heat to medium-low and cover the pot with its lid. Let the dumplings steam for 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and remove the lid. 

 

You should be presented with beautiful, fluffy pillows of dumpling goodness floating upon a rich, dark brown soup. Ladle dumplings and soup into bowls and serve immediately. Dumplings will eventually become slightly soggy after about 30 minutes of sitting in the soup, so save any leftover soup without the dumplings. Happy cooking, kitchen nerds, and let me know how it turns out!

Serves 6

Want to use the rest of your buttermilk? Check out my recipes for the best buttermilk biscuits or give my chocolate buttermilk pie a whirl!