Chicken and Dumplings Soup

What can I say about this recipe? It’s comforting and is the perfect thick, hearty soup for cold weather. It’s a crowd pleaser, and in my opinion better than any kind of chicken and dumpling soup you can buy from a can, because it’s a true southern style homemade soup. My mom made this one for me growing up, and it’s one of our family favorites. I often take it to sick friends and neighbors. The leftovers taste even better the next day and it freezes well. It’s also very cheap to make and the ingredients are common in most every household. I very rarely make this in small batches because it disappears so quickly so you might consider doubling or tripling it, especially if you are making it for a crowd!

Ingredients

Soup:

• 1 stick of butter
• 3 large carrots, sliced
• 1 large diced onion
• 3 celery stalks, sliced
• 2 eggs (omit the eggs if you plan on freezing it, as they get rubbery and hard)
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 8 cups water
• Salt and pepper to taste

Dumplings:

• 1 ¾ cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp shortening or vegetable oil
• ¾ cup milk

Directions

1. Melt butter in large soup pot. Add carrots, onion, and celery and cook over medium high heat until they are cooked though.
2. Add chicken to pot and continue to cook until meat is no longer pink.
3. Slowly add in the chicken stock, being sure to scrape off all the yummy bits stuck to the bottom of the pan while you add it in.
4. In a separate pot, boil eggs for 12 minutes. Remove them from pot and put them in cold ice water to shock them and top the cooking process. One cool, remove shells and dice eggs.
5. In a separate bowl, combine dumpling ingredients and stir well. Dough will be sticky, so add extra flour if needed.
6. Heavily flour a surface to work with your dough on. Roll dumpling dough to about ¼ inch thick. Slice the dough lengthwise and widthwise creating 1 inch by 2 inch strips.
7. Make sure soup pot is at a slow rolling boil. This is the best temperature to drop the dumplings in at. Slowly drop dumpling strips into the pot, one by one.
8. Add diced egg to pot (omit if freezing), and simmer on medium low for 1-2 hours, stirring frequently. You may need to reduce the heat as it thickens to make sure it doesn’t stick. The dumplings will expand and cook through and the soup will thicken quite a bit from the added flour. If you find that it is getting too thick, just add some extra water or chicken stock. Since this is a soup, measurements don’t have to be exact.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot and enjoy!

*Photo by Stephanie, used under the Flickr creative commons license.