Chicken and Dumplings

It has been so long since I posted a recipe. At the back of my brain, I kept thinking, "I love cooking but it's so busy!" I thought I'd start back up with a simple one my sister-in-law shared with me that is quite delicious. This is the original site for the recipe and it has some great pictures.

As a side note, I've tried this recipe with buttermilk and didn't really notice a change or improvement to the taste of the noodles. Still good and relatively the same flavor.

Also, when I don't have homemade broth for my recipes, I use bullion cubes and then add some powdered onion, sage, garlic, pepper, and celery salt. The celery salt and garlic I add in small amounts maybe 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. The sage is more along the 1/2 tsp lines and the onion powder is around 1 tsp. I love pepper in this recipe so I go kind of crazy with it. All in all, it's about your personal tastes and I never measure exactly. Like yesterday when my 2 year old decided to help with the sage addition. Still tasted good but I have no idea how much got in the pot, on the stove top, and in his mouth!

Anyway, the recipe:

2 cups Flour
½ teaspoons Baking Powder
1 pinch Salt
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 cup Milk, A Bit Less Than A Full Cup
2 quarts Chicken Broth
3 cups Cooked Chicken (small pieces)*

Directions:

1. Assuming the chicken has been dealt with, I start by putting my broth up to boil.
2. Noodles are next. I have a food processor which makes this easy, but the long and short is put the dry ingredients together, cut the butter into them, and then add the milk. I really does take a bit less than a cup to create a cohesive lump of yummy dough. So add it until it forms a nice, soft dough that isn't going to stick all over your hands.
3. Flour** the surface you're going to roll the dough out onto. Be liberal with it and roll the dough out thin. Thin is a rather vague word, but the thinner it is, the more noodles you get. So decide if you like thicker noodles and less of them or thinner noodles and lots of them. After you've rolled them out, feel free to smooth some more flour out on top of the noodles. Lots of flour equals a thicker result for your recipe.
     3b. If you are using some frozen chicken pieces, I would throw them into the pot around now.
4. I use a pizza slicer to cut the noodles. You could do that or use a cutter that's around 2"x2". Whatever floats your boat. Cut the noodles and then move them to the pot. I pick them up with my hands, my spouse uses a spatula and a plate, sprinkling flour between the noodle layers. However you do it, drop them in one or two at a time making sure they've separated and let all that extra flour fall into the pot.
5. If I have thawed or just cooked chicken I put it in after I've added the noodles and cook the whole thing for 15 - 20 minutes. You could also wait until the end. Either way has worked for me.
6. Make sure the noodles don't taste like dough and then serve it up in bowls!

*I use around 1.5 cups of chicken. The spouse, toddler and I enjoy the noodles so we back down on the amount of chicken. I use a rotisserie chicken from Costco which usually yields 2 - 3 recipes worth of chicken depending on how much you use per recipe. It's quick, easy, and tasty. Just freeze the extra chicken for later or use it in a salad!
**Use lots of flour for the rolling and cutting of the noodles. All that flour should end up in the pot so you get a nice, thick batch by the end (in all honesty, it really does take a lot of flour and sometimes my recipe turns out nice and thick and sometimes, it doesn't. It tastes good either way.)