Make Chicken and dumplings soup

Chicken and dumplings.

I made this for company the other day. Quite a thing for a brisk fall evening. I'm especially happy with how the dumplings themselves turned out. Lots of flavor in there, nice light texture. Traditionally you'd start by just boiling a whole chicken in water to make chicken soup, but I'm going with the far more convenient and consistent boneless, skinless thighs. About a pound and a half, 700g. That might not sound like a ton of meat for like six portions, but remember there's no bone, no skin.

That's all net weight, and I'm just snipping each thigh into maybe four pieces. I'm gonna cook this until the meat is falling apart, so the chunks we eat will actually be even smaller. But if you don't cut them up front you're gonna get super long strings of meat that I think are undesirable. I'm shortening the meat fibers here, and I'm using scissors instead of a knife so that I don't have to wash the cutting board. Now, I'm gonna start this more like a stew than a soup. Enough pepper for every piece, some mixed dried herbs, enough salt for every piece and then enough flour to coat, like half a cup, 50-60g and toss. This how I do breadings whenever possible — season the food instead of the flour or the breadcrumbs or whatever. It's much easier to eyeball the seasoning quantity on the meat than on a pile of flour.

Heat a good film of oil. If you have bacon grease or some such this would be a great time to use that instead. You really gotta lay the pieces in one a time. If you just dump them in all at once they're gonna congeal into a giant slimy meatball. Because I've completely filled my pot with meat and because I'm on a weak gas stove, I'm on high heat. But you be conservative if you don't know your stove. You don't want anything to burn. Nor do you want to try to flip the pieces until they've browned well on the bottom.

If they aren't brown, they'll stick really bad. A wooden spoon is definitely the best way to nudge the pieces off the pan. You can really dig down underneath them without scratching the pan. Once I've got those flipped, I'll run over here and cut 8 ounces, 227g of mushrooms — in half — the biggest ones I'll quarter, but they're gonna shrink a ton. Oops — I got a little burning happening over here. That could absolutely dissolve in the soup and spoil the flavor. The solution is to grab a wet paper towel with tongs and scrub the burned spot clean. Better yet, don't burn anything at all.

These pieces are brown enough. I'll push them over to one side and throw in my mushrooms to get a little color on them. I might even push the pot a little bit off the heat so that the chicken doesn't burn.

The heat is only under the mushrooms side now.

I keep coming back to green onions as my favorite form of onion. Two bunches, lose the roots. They're easy to cut, the give you some onion, and they give you some nice bright green garnish. I will reserve said garnish for later and throw the whites in with the mushrooms.

Just give them a couple minute head start. And if you're thinking, "Now's about the time Adam would totally deglaze with an entire bottle of white wine," well, you'd be right. Water or stock would be fine instead. I've got a pound of carrots here. Thick-sliced carrots take about the same time to stew soft as chunks of dark meat chicken do, so I'll get those in right away. Then a whole carton of chicken stock. Remember, it's supposed to be more soup than stew, so lots of liquid. A pinch or two of salt to start with — we can always add more at the end.

Maybe I'll grab what's left of this garlic head, cut off the root ends, bash to loosen the skin and I'll just throw those smashed cloves in there whole. They'll just melt over the long cooking. Stir, bring to a boil, reduce to a spirited simmer, then you're gonna cover and do something else for 45 minutes.

After 30 to 45 minutes of simmering, the chicken and the carrots are almost tender, so I will now add in this 12 ounce, 340g bag of green beans. Just cut those into spoonable-sized pieces. At a simmer, these will take a half hour, max, to soften. We want to drop our dumplings when everything is 15 minutes from being done. I've got a lot of fresh rosemary and sage here — very cozy flavors.

I'll chop that up nice and fine

Because i'm putting it in my dumplings.

Usually the dumplings are kinda bland and

They're flavored by the broth.

I think it's kinda fun to reverse that, and what's crazy good inside the dumplings is lemon zest.

Just try it. The juice we'll put in the broth later. That's what happens when you watch the camera monitor instead of reality. If you have cake flour in the house, use that instead of all-purpose, but all-purpose will be ok. About two cups, 230g. Cake flour is lighter than AP — less protein — softer dumpling texture. I'd say two teaspoons of baking powder, because we're making.

Southern-style chicken and dumplings where the dumplings are more like biscuits than noodles. I think half a teaspoon of salt is enough but you could do a little more. Garlic powder on the inside of the dumplings — that really tastes good, just trust me. In with our herbs and lemon zest. Then I'll grab two or three tablespoons of butter, melt it, pour it in and then mix. If you mix in the fat before you mix in the water, you coat lots of the flour in fat, you're gonna block some gluten development and get super tender dumplings. Also for tender dumplings, you don't want to mix up this batter until right before you're ready to drop it into the soup. Now just mix in just enough milk or water to make this come together into a shaggy, sloppy dough, like a cup of liquid, max.

It is absolutely key to not over-hydrate or over mix this. It should be a mess. You should just barely be able to roll this into little balls. The fault lines created by uneven mixing will get you a crumbly texture. Don't go any bigger than these balls, by the way, because they'll double in size when they cook. Just drop them into the broth. Make sure the heat is high enough that you've got a low boil. You need that to activate the baking powder in there and get these to puff up.

Put the lid on so the tops of the dumplings steam and don't peak for at least 10 minutes. While I wait, here's my fancy finishing touch. Not traditional, at least not outside of Louisiana. I'm going to thicken and enrich my soup with a liaison. 5 or 6 eggs. I'll fish out the yolks and eat the whites for breakfast tomorrow. In classic French cooking I believe the typical ratio is one part egg yolks to three parts cream. Mix that up smooth and we will add that custard at the last second.

The dumplings are done when they look done.

You can always tear one open.

It should look like bread inside, not dough. If you overcook them they get very dense, so 10 or 15 minutes, max. I will now reduce my heat until I see no more bubbles. It is now safe for me to stir in my liaison. People say you have to do a whole tempering maneuver. But if you stir it in briskly, off the boil, it's gonna be fine.

You might have to turn the heat back up ever so slightly to cook this. You should see the liquid noticeably thicken, just a little, when the eggs cook. Of course, if you overcook them, the eggs will curdle, the soup will look gritty. That is a perfect, velvety broth. You could just use cream. Straight cream is safer, but you'd need a lot more creme to achieve the same textural effect, and you wouldn't get the extra flavor and color of the eggs. Heat off to be safe with the eggs, and now I'll taste for seasoning. Needs a little more salt, and I'll squeeze in maybe half of my lemon.

If I hadn't used the white wine I'd probably do the whole lemon. And I've got my reserved onion greens to stir in at the last minute thereby keeping them green and pretty. There you go — slightly elevated cold-weather comfort food. I love how the stew-like flour coating we did on the chicken kinda melts into the broth and merges the elements together, and I am so happy with these dumplings. The strong herb and lemon and garlic flavor in there is just insane. Not exactly a low-cal dinner, but we did go very heavy on the vegetables relative to the other elements. Please don't take my version of this dish as traditional. There's all kinds of traditional ways to make chicken and dumplings and maybe we'll do one of those another day...