Start with a whole chicken. Rinse it and salt inside and out. Put it in a large stock pot and add some carrots, celery, onion, and a bay leaf or two. I came across a great idea in another blog to save the ends of carrots, celery, and onion in a bag in the freezer to use for stocks, why did I never think of that? Great way to cut down on waste. Add some more salt and pepper. Toss in some fresh rosemary and thyme if you have it. Bring it to a boil, skim the top, cover, and simmer for several hours.
Now to the yummy, nutritious simmering broth you want to add some veggies. Here I've done diced potatoes, carrots, celery, and peas. Zucchini and green beans are also great. While the veggies get tender, start on the dumplings.
Now I know these don't look like the dumplings I've posted in the past. That's because they're not. These are the fluffy little cloud type. I like these for stews and the flat dumplings for plain old broth and chicken.
1.5 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tbsp fat
Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. For your fat, you could use vegetable oil, but yuck. Don't. Melt 2tbps butter or lard and beat with the egg and milk. Pour into the flour mixture and mix until just combined (you don't want to over mix). Once the veggies are tender, add the shredded chicken back in (you can use all the meat from the chicken or just half, saving the rest for another meal). Bring the stew back up to a simmer. Once you have a nice simmer going, start dropping the dumplings in by the spoonful. Cover the pot, keep the heat on low, and walk away for 20 minutes. Do not peek. Just don't. You'll ruin your dumplings. After 20 minutes, the dumplings should be fluffy and wonderful.
Mmmm, dumplings. And broth, beautiful golden broth. Doesn't get much better than this! This is a pretty low calorie dish as well, provided you don't gorge on dumplings. Which, let's be honest, is hard not to do.
