Thursday, May 19, 2011

Chicks & Dumps


Sunday was unseasonably chilly for Memphis in May, and by chilly I mean like 65 degrees, yes my Yankee blood has turned Southern.  Normally this is when the unbearable heat begins.  I had plans to grill some chicken and some veggies and use up my delicious chimichurri, but instead I decided to make Chicken n' Dumplings.  I needed a.) a little comfort food, b.) a recipe to use up some of my chicken stock that is now taking up all the space in my freezer, and c.) something other than the health food I've been eating to tone my ass up for the Hangout Festival this weekend, so that the only "hanging out" I'll be doing is attitudinal, rather than having my ass hanging out of my bathing suit. 

Here's What You Need:
2 Chicken Breasts (cut into bite sized chunks)
1 cup of flour
Poultry Seasoning
Salt n' Pepper
3 carrots, peeled and chopped into bite sized chunks
2 celery stalks, cut into bite sized chunks
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 pints of chicken stock (or enough to cover all your meat and veg and boil up some dumplin's)
4 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup of Bisquick (I know, I know, I should be making my own dumplings at this point, but I had just one cup of Bisquick left and I couldn't justify not using it up before leaving for my vacation.)
1/3 cup of milk
2 tablespoons of thyme, chopped

Here's What You Do:
In a stock pot, on medium high heat, add in two tablespoons of olive oil.  Add 1 cup of flour to a bag or bowl and season with the poultry seasoning and salt and pepper (about 1 tsp. of s&p).  After you cut the chicken, add it to the bag of seasoned flour and coat each piece.  When the oil on the stove is hot, add in chicken.  Brown chicken on all sides.  If you need more olive oil, use it.  Don't be greedy with the olive oil.  Remove chicken and set aside.  Add in 2 more tablespoons of olive oil to the hot pan.  Add in your onion, carrot and celery and saute until tender, about 5 minutes.  While you're stirring the veggies around, make sure you're scraping all the browned, floury bits off the bottom of the pan.  Add in garlic and saute for about 1 minute.  Add in chicken stock and bay leaves and chicken back to the soupy mixture.  Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 20 minutes.

Make your dumplings by adding the Bisquick, milk and thyme (you can use parsley if you like, but I have a ton of thyme outside, so I used it...plus I think it makes the soup more homey tasting).  Stir until all the Bisquick is mixed in.  Bring your soup back up to a boil.  Drop dumpling mixture, by the spoonful into the bubbling broth.  They will grow to be like 3 times the size of what you drop in, so remember that as you drop. Drop your heat back down to a simmer.  Cook dumplings for 10 minutes.  Then cover your pan and cook for another 10 minutes.  I usually flip my dumplings over before I cover and cook for the ten more minutes.  So you can do that, or don't...It really doesn't matter.  It's just one of my manic kitchen moves (more on these later).

Enjoy your delicious, homey, make you want to snuggle up with your momma chicken and dumplings.  I know I did.  I ate 2 bowls.  And now I have to go do 2 workouts so that my ass doesn't resemble a dumpling at Hangout Festival.  Dumpling ass is NO BUENO!!   

Oh yea, and apparently the world is going to end on Saturday.  So hopefully I'll be going out with either the Avett Brothers, the Flaming Lips or the Foo Fighters.  Any one of them should be fun to hang with on our last day on Earth (do people really believe this shit?  I mean, seriously??)  See ya on the flip side, bitches!

6 comments:

Leigh said...

Sounds delish!

Anonymous said...

Couldnt agree more with that, very attractive article

Jess said...

Thanks ya'll!

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for a related topic, your site came up, it looks good.

Jess said...

Thank you! I'm glad you stumbled upon it!

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for a related topic, your site came up, it looks good.

Followers