Easy Chicken Dumplings

YUMM! I don't need to say more. I tried this recipe last night when I came home from being stuck in the rain..it was more than I could hope for.  Get the recipe after the break.

Chicken and Dumplings are the perfect comfort food and these can be made over the campfire or on your own stove at home. Ingredients 1 whole fryer chicken (4-5 pounds) 4 ribs of chopped celery 1 large chopped onion 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can chicken broth 1 teaspoon of salt 1 teaspoon of pepper 1 Tablespoon of garlic powder FOR DUMPLINGS: 2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 egg 5 Tablespoons butter 1/2 cups milk 2 tsp. minced parsley 1 tsp. pepper Instructions In a large stockpot, place the chicken and enough water to cover it. Add the celery, the onion, the chicken broth and the three seasonings and cover. Bring to a boil and then move it off the hot flames and find a place where it can simply simmer for about an hour or longer if you’d like. We take it off at an hour when it’s super hot outside, but if it’s colder weather, you might wish to leave it on an extra hour. It won’t hurt anything either way. Remove from the heat. What we do, and you can do whatever you want here, is that we remove the chicken from the broth. This speeds up the cooling process. In order to do that, we bring a big strainer and an extra pot (we always have extra pots for cooking while we’re camping) and we just strain while transferring the broth from one pot to the other. This strains out the veggies which are soggy and not needed by now and any spare bones that may have become separated during the cooking process. However you do it, you need to get the chicken to cool and you need to make sure that the veggies are removed along with other bones. Do NOT throw out the chicken broth water. Just cover it in it’s new pot and let it stay as warm as you can but don’t put it back on the fire just yet. Once the chicken has cooled enough to handle (we don’t wait long, it’s still pretty hot when we do it, but you can wait longer and it won’t mess anything up) remove the skin from the chicken and pull the meat off the bones of the chicken putting it back in the pot. At this point it’s okay to taste the broth and add any other seasonings you might want – more garlic powder, more salt, more pepper, maybe add some parsley. Return the broth and chicken to the fire and allow to simmer again. Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix up all of the ingredients for the dumplings. Knead by hand for a bit (10 minutes or so) or until everything is mixed up nicely. Now I know lots of traditional recipes tell you to roll them into balls, and if you want to do that, you go right ahead, but we just pull pieces off and drop them into the simmering liquid. We just like it better that way and it fits right into your mouth. Allow to simmer and cook about 20 minutes or so longer and then it is ready to serve. Enjoy!

Cheat tip: If you don’t want to bother with homemade dumplings, you can also use store bought crescent dough or biscuit dough. Sometimes we do it in a pinch. It usually makes the broth thicker as it cooks and there aren’t much dumplings left at the end. But it tastes amazing. recipe original by design sponge

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