Chicken and Dumplings

Depending on where you come from chicken and dumplings can mean a lot of things to different people. I happen to live in Evansville and most people around here think of chicken and dumplings as a thickish square egg noodle cooked in chicken broth with chicken. My parents however are from elsewhere and I think of chicken and dumplings as a light fluffy biscuit type thing cooked in chicken broth with chicken.

I've never been a fan of from scratch dumplings or biscuits for that matter. The most likely reason being that I may be congenitally unable to make light and fluffy dumplings or biscuits. However this evening we were rushed, we had to make several unplanned stops and when we went to the store I forgot the Jiffy mix. Being just a little too tired to schlep myself back to the store and feeling that it might be totally unfair to send Karl who was equally as stressed and tired as I was, I resigned myself to from scratch dumplings. I decided to take a different approach...

Boil a chicken, seasoning it well with salt and pepper in a large pan with enough water to cover until chicken is done between 45 minutes to an hour or so. Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside to cool.

4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup lard
1/4 vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup (at least) milk

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening and the oil using a pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk and enough regular milk to form a loose but thick dough. Set aside.

Check the broth from boiling the chicken for seasoning add more salt and pepper if needed. Pick the chicken from the bones and add this to broth. Bring the broth to a boil. Drop about half of the dumpling mixture by large tablespoons over the boiling broth until top of broth is covered evenly in a single layer. Bring broth back to a boil, reduce heat cover tightly and simmer for twenty minutes. Remove lid and either serve the dumplings or skim them into a large shallow dish. For the second batch check the broth if it's very thick you can add more chicken broth or some water to thin it out. Repeat the same process for the second batch of dumplings.

These turned out very light and fluffy and pretty yummy too. Is this the end for Jiffy Mix? Probably not, I still can't make a decent biscuit, but in future not having it on hand will definitely not be the point of stress it's been before.