Cooking With Angela: The Dumplings That Weren't

Christmas is approaching, which means there will be tons of food around, and I'm also in the process of moving, so this week I decided to clear out the pantry and fridge and see what I could come up with without having to go grocery shopping. I decided on Chicken and Dumplings, and had found what seemed to be a fairly easy recipe... Boil Chicken, save stock, add dumplings... I think somewhere along there I cut a few too many corners or something, or maybe it just wasn't a good recipe lol! 

I was able to salvage the chicken part of the recipe, it called for a whole chicken to be boiled for hours, and I didn't have that kind of time or that kind of bird =P

What I did have was frozen chicken breasts (absolutely perfect for boiling, I've learned!) and chicken stock+bullion cubes! Worked like a charm, adding a little bit of that whole chicken flavor back to the meat, and making the base for my 'soup'.

Since my primary goal when doing these cooking shots is to, well, get a good photograph, I rarely need any extra helpers in the kitchen with me... So I was a little annoyed when my fiance's dog decided to come see what all the fuss in the kitchen was about hehe... What a little stinker, ruining my shots like that! With that said though, I do think the one where I'm scolding him turned out rather cute!

With the dog safely out of the kitchen, I was able to work on the dumplings for my chicken. Going back to the idea that I was using what I had, the recipe called for Shortening, which I didn't have, but I did have butter! So into the flour went that and water, and a pinch of salt. And that's where I started to get nervous. The dough still looked like wet flour, not like lovely biscuit dough I was hoping for, but I kept going, since I was making southern style chicken and dumplings they aren't meant to be all fluffy and biscuit-y, so maybe that's how they were supposed to look. And besides, they would get some flavor from the chicken stock, right?

My fancy pizza cutter got some fancy use for a change, making little dumplings for me to put into the stock and chicken mix. At this point I also decided to add some frozen veggies to make more of a chicken soup in case the dumplings didn't make the cut. =P 

I also got to use my cutting board in the manner in which it was made for, and that's to make chopping and transporting easy. Just leave whatever you just cut up on the mat and bend it to pour the contents into whatever they need to go to, in this case right into my chicken soup. I was a little worried the mats would cave under the heavy biscuit dough, but they worked perfectly! They're quite durable for such a simple little board!

 As for the final verdict, well I wouldn't exactly call this recipe a success, but it did turn out to be quite edible... The chicken soup of course, not the dumplings =P Unlike I had hoped, they were too dense to suck up any of the liquid from the stock (one recipe review suggested using the stock instead of water when making the dumplings, should have read that beforehand I guess =P) but I think it merits a second go once I get settled into my new place and have some shortening, or maybe a different recipe lol!