Let's Eat Blog Hop ~ Chicken and Dumplings

Welcome to my corner of the "Let's Eat Blog Hop"
organized by my dear friend, Amy, in the land down under.

If you found me by way of Rhona's blog, welcome!!!
And if you're just starting with my blog, be sure to check out
the link at the end of my post to see what Karen is cooking up.
From there you can continue traveling around our planet to see
what the rest of my blog friends are serving.

♥
My entry is coming to you from Chandler, Arizona
and I'm featuring one of my family's favorites:

Chicken and Dumplings

It's a very basic chicken soup with fluffy biscuits on top and is also known as the meal that is a sure fire way to get our daughter, Carrie to come for dinner! It works every time.

The ingredients are simple. For the soup portion of this dish I use carrots, celery, onion, chicken breast, chicken broth, Italian seasonings {combination of oregano, basil, marjoram, thyme, rosemary and sage}, salt, and pepper. For the dumplings I use a Bisquick baking mix and make the dumplings as listed on the side of the box. You can also use a basic dumpling recipe found here. Oh, and a little olive oil for sauteing the veggies, and some milk for mixing the dumplings.

Here's how I do it: I prepare this in a certain order... Heat the olive oil in a large pot while you chop one medium sized onion. Saute the onion in the olive oil while you chop the celery (I used 5 stalks of celery, plus the smaller inside stalks with leaves). Add the celery to the pot and saute while you chop the carrots...then add the carrots to the pot. I cover the pot and let this simmer while I cut the chicken breast pieces into bite-sized pieces. I use about a pound and a half of chicken for this recipe. When I'm ready to add the chicken, I scoot the veggies to one side...

Ick. Raw chicken really grosses me out.

Cover the pan and let this simmer for a few minutes, stir, put the cover back on and continue cooking until all of the chicken pieces are white - about 5-10 minutes. It should look like this:
Now add 8 cups of chicken broth - or if you're me, you do 8 cups of water and 6 chicken bouillon cubes. Also add a generous sprinkling of Italian seasoning at this point, and you can add some salt and pepper if you like. Bring to a boil then cover and reduce the heat. Simmer until close to the time you are going to eat. This varies for me. I've done as little as 30 minutes on nights that we're in a hurry, or an hour and a half on this occasion because I had a little extra time.

Oh, hi. Cheers!
♥

Ok, now it's time for the dumplings. If you are using Bisquick or a similar baking mix, I use three cups of Bisquick and one cup of milk. {Or if you don't have access to a baking mix like this, use this recipe instead.} Mix it together and drop it by big spoonfuls on top of the soup. Please note: you want your soup to be hot enough that there's a slow boil - not rolling bubbles if that makes sense. If your soup is boiling too aggressively, it will pull the dumplings down and they won't cook up nice and fluffy.

Yum. My mouth is watering.

Now cover the pan and leave it covered for 10 minutes.

Then, uncover the pan and continue to cook for another 10 minutes. Sprinkle some black pepper on top and you're ready to serve.

~clink~
To us!

This girl loves chicken and dumplings.

Now, it's a well known and understood fact that Doug is the king of our household. It's also a well known and understood fact the Carrie always gets dibs on chicken and dumpling leftovers.

♥ ♥ ♥

So there you have it. I hope you'll give it a try!
And now, head on over to Karen's blog where she's cooking
up something yummy for our"Let's Eat" blog hop!

♥ Oh, and if you use the dumpling recipe from the link above, you
may need to convert the measurements by using this site here.

Bon appetit!