At 2:51 this afternoon my phone buzzed on my desk during my last class of the day. It was Ryan: a photo of a whole chicken in the Dutch oven, and two words. "It's on." It was 47 degrees outside, the first cold Friday of the fall, and we had a deal.
The deal is that whoever gets home first starts the chicken. His shift ends at 2:30 and mine doesn't, so he wins every time, which I suspect he knew from the start.
Chicken and dumplings was Sunday dinner at Granny June's, the kind that simmered all morning while everybody was at church. Her card in the red box says "Hen, cover with water, simmer till tender. Dumplins: flour, lard, broth. Roll thin as a dime. Drop in boiling broth." That last word cost me a few years, but I'll get to it.
Rolled, not drop
If you grew up somewhere else, you might know dumplings as soft biscuit-dough puffs spooned on top of a stew. Those are drop dumplings, and they're good. Granny's were rolled: a stiff dough rolled thin, cut in strips and simmered in the broth until tender and a little chewy, closer to a thick noodle. The flour on them thickens the broth as they cook, so you end up with something between a soup and a gravy.
Gummy dumplings are the problem everyone has, and I had it worse than most. The first time I made these for Ryan, the year we got married, I followed the card to the letter: a hard boil, every strip in at once, stirring like I was making gravy. We ate wallpaper paste with chicken in it. Here's the why I'd put on the board in class: a hard boil tears at the outside of the dough and turns it to paste before the inside has time to cook. A steady simmer cooks them evenly. Letting the cut strips dry for 15 minutes before they go in helps too, and so does keeping your spoon out of the pot for the first ten.
If yours have already gone gummy, take the lid off, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer for another 10 minutes and loosen the pot with a cup of hot broth. Next time, roll thinner.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, 4 to 4 1/2 pounds
- 1 onion, quartered, plus 2 carrots and 2 celery ribs in chunks
- 2 bay leaves and 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 12 cups cold water
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 3 tablespoons cold butter or lard
- 2/3 cup cold whole milk
- 1/2 cup half-and-half, 2 tablespoons butter and 1 teaspoon black pepper, to finish
How I make it
- Put the chicken, vegetables, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt and water in a 6-quart or larger Dutch oven. Bring it just to a boil, then turn it down to a gentle simmer, partly covered, for about an hour, until a thigh reads 175°F and the leg wiggles loose.
- Lift the chicken onto a sheet pan to cool. Strain the broth and skim off some of the fat. Return about 8 cups to the pot and keep a cup or two hot on the side.
- Pull the meat into bite-size pieces and discard the skin and bones.
- For the dumplings, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt, cut in the butter until it looks like coarse meal, and stir in the milk to make a stiff dough. Knead it five or six times.
- Roll it on a well-floured counter to 1/8 inch, about two stacked quarters. Cut 1-by-2-inch strips with a pizza cutter and let them sit 15 minutes.
- Bring the broth to a steady simmer, not a rolling boil. Drop the strips in one at a time, giving the pot a shake now and then. Simmer uncovered 15 to 20 minutes without stirring for the first 10.
- Cut one in half. If there's no pale, raw stripe in the middle, they're done. Stir in the chicken, half-and-half, butter and pepper, and let the pot sit off the heat 10 minutes to thicken.
On a school night the schedule runs like this: Ryan starts the chicken around 2:50, I'm home by 4:15 to pull it and make the dough, the broth is strained by 4:45, dumplings go in at 5:30 and we eat a little before 6. You can also simmer the chicken the night before and refrigerate the meat and broth separately, or cut the dumplings ahead, freeze them on a sheet pan and drop them in frozen with 5 extra minutes. Leftovers thicken overnight, so add broth when you reheat, and get the pot into the fridge within two hours.
The chicken was $1.49 a pound at Kroger, so the whole pot came to about $11 for six bowls. Jack gave it an eight and asked why we don't have it every Friday. My card, filed behind Granny's, says "Oct. 2025: SIMMER, don't boil. 1/8 inch. Hands off 10 min." She'd have told me the same thing if I'd thought to ask.
