It has been super cold in NYC these last several days—perfect weather for Chicken & Dumplings.
This is a bowl of pure comfort: creamy chicken stew with plenty of nourishing vegetables and fluffy, parsley-flecked dumplings. Yum! It’s the best kind of stick-to-your-ribs meal to have in your culinary arsenal during the winter, alongside its spiritual sibling, Chicken Pot Pie, of course.
Chicken & Dumplings starts with a stew which, in this case, is nothing more than a slightly-enhanced chicken soup. To that end, I follow a similar method to my Sopa de Pollo recipe, cutting the vegetables into larger chunks and simmering them with bone-in skin-on chicken until cooked through. The chicken gets shredded and returned to the pot, and then it’s time to thicken the stew and simmer the dumplings.
Most chicken & dumplings recipes I have seen rely on a roux of flour and butter for thickening, but I decided to go with a slurry here because I am somewhat averse to creamy savory things and didn’t want to cook the milk in this recipe for very long (but very much wanted Chicken & Dumplings).
Like a roux, a slurry is a way of thickening a liquid by adding something starchy, usually cornstarch or flour. Where the roux involves cooking the starch with fat (like butter) at the beginning of the recipe before adding liquid, a slurry is a paste of starch and a small amount of liquid that is added at least part-way through through. Each has its strong points and I regularly use both methods, but since I based the recipe off Sopa de Pollo and am decidedly squicky about dairy, I went with a slurry here. A mixture of flour, milk and dijon mustard is added right before the dumplings go into the pot, adding flavor and a velvety, creamy texture to the broth.
But that’s enough about the stew—the dumplings are the stars of this show! They’re basically a biscuit dough that gets dropped into the pot, then covered and simmered in all that chicken-y goodness until fluffy and light and wonderful. Though they start as a sticky dough, they expand dramatically in the closed pot. Don’t be tempted to open it and check on them—you’ll release all the steam and end up with leaden results. Yuck. The dumplings only take fifteen or so minutes to cook up into buttery little pillows, so just trust the process. It will be worth the wait!
Once the dumplings are done, stir some frozen peas and parsley into the pot, set the table and serve yourself some Chicken & Dumplings! Between the creamy, vegetable-heavy chicken stew and fluffy dumplings, it’s easy to understand why this recipe is a cold weather comfort food classic.
Chicken & Dumplings
makes 6-8 servings
3 lbs bone-in skin-on chicken pieces (I used a mix of white and dark)
1/2-1 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt + more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper + more to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
6 cups chicken stock (I use Better Than Bouillon)
4 medium carrots, peeled & trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
4 stalks celery, cleaned & trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 medium or 2 small turnips, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large white or Spanish onion, large-diced
5 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole milk (or half-and-half or heavy cream)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 cup frozen peas
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Dumplings:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup whole milk
Use paper towels to pat chicken dry, then season with salt and pepper to taste.
Add oil and butter to a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on all sides, about 5-7 minutes per side. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add carrots, turnip, onion, garlic, bay leaf and thyme. Once the stock returns to a boil, reduce it to a simmer and let cook for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the ingredients for the dumplings. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and parsley. Combine butter and milk in a microwave-safe liquid measuring cup, then microwave in 30 second increments, stirring between, until butter is melted (90 seconds in my microwave). Set wet and dry aside.
Once the soup has simmered 30 minutes, turn it down to the lowest heat. Use tongs to fish out the chicken and remove it to a heatproof plate. Fish out and discard bay leaf.
When the chicken has cooled enough that you can handle it, remove and discard skin and bones. Shred or slice chicken into bite-sized pieces, then return it to the soup.
Make a slurry to thicken the stew. In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk together flour, mustard and milk until smooth (or very close to smooth). Stir the mixture into the soup and return it to a simmer over medium-low. Taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary.
Mix the dumplings. Stir wet ingredients into dry just until combined. The dough will be sticky and shaggy; don’t overmix. Use a medium cookie scoop or a pair of spoons to scoop dough into 1 1/2 tablespoon dumplings and drop them in a single layer on the surface of the soup. Put the lid on the pan and keep covered for 15-18 minutes. Do not peek until 15 minutes have passed. Remove one dumpling, and slice it open to determine if it is done to your liking. If not, return the lid to the pot for another 3 minutes.
When dumplings are done, remove the pot from the heat. Gently stir in peas and parsley. Let sit 5-10 minutes before serving with additional parsley if desired.
Leftover chicken and dumplings will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to four days. Reheat in the microwave or on the stove.
Southern-style 
All that said, I’ve never really gotten on the drop biscuit train. I guess I thought they were cheating or something—the ingredients and mixing methods are nearly identical, but you don’t have to pat and cut anything, instead scooping the sticky dough directly onto a pan before baking. I suppose that without dirtying a surface or doing extra work I assumed that they were a slightly-less-good version of the “real deal.” But I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Turns out, drop biscuits are their own thing entirely. They’re fluffy and tender instead of flaky and layered, and they have these extra crispy-crunchy exteriors with which I am now fully obsessed. And the recipe works with both whole milk and buttermilk, and (!) I don’t have to scrape an invisible layer of butter and flour off of my countertop every time I make a batch. Drop biscuits, where have you been all my life???
I won’t lie to you: drop biscuits are not a traditionally beautiful food. They’re scraggly, craggy and have slightly wonky shapes, regardless of whether you use a cookie scoop, a spoon or your hands to dole out dough. They’re super delicious, just a little ugly. Or at least they are until you give them a glossy coat of salty-sweet honey butter.
Ohhh yes.
I’ve been meaning to put a Chicken Pot Pie on here for years, but inevitably I’d forget about it until the day before Thanksgiving (things to do with turkey leftovers!) or winter would slip away from me too quickly, and then it was summer, and who wants to make—let alone eat—a Chicken Pot Pie in July?
Imagine my delight when the right timing and opportunity finally presented themselves a few weeks ago, when it seemed like every big-time food person in the world was making 
I started making pot pies 
I won’t lie to you, a from-scratch Chicken Pot Pie can take a bit of time to prepare. All of the filling ingredients have to be cooked before they can be put together. This includes the chicken; I made a 
Once the various vegetables are cooked in butter until fork-tender, they all go in a big skillet together, and then you build the gravy on top of them. Stir in some flour (creating a sort of roux), then chicken stock, cream, dijon mustard, fresh herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer it all for ten minutes before removing the saucy, bubbling mix from the heat. Stir in your chicken and some frozen peas, then set your filling aside so you can roll out the buttermilk biscuit crust.
Oh yes, back to the buttermilk biscuit crust! It’s tender and flaky, and you’re going to freaking flip over how easy it is to make. The dough comes together exactly as it does when you’re making traditional biscuits, except after all the folds and turns it’s split in half and chilled while you make the filling. At this point, when the filling is cooling a bit, the dough is rolled out and fitted to the pan just like any other pie crust. As biscuit dough is softer and contains half the butter of most pie doughs, I found this remarkably easy with which to work.
To finish off your Chicken Pot Pie, fill the bottom crust with your filling, then drape on the top crust, cut a few vents, paint the whole thing with egg wash, and bake it for about 30 minutes. Once your pie is burnished and bubbling, it’s time for dinner.
And oh, what a dinner it is. The filling is creamy and chickeny and rich, but never as heavy as I think it will be. The buttermilk biscuit crust is slightly puffed and perfectly browned, and retains distinct layers, just like it would in its traditional form.
This is the best sort of Sunday dinner…or Monday through Thursday dinner if you, like me, have the enviable job of eating the whole thing yourself. Food blogger life isn’t always as glamorous as it seems, but I was happy to take this one for the team.
e2 bakes brooklyn 