"We'll all have chicken 'n dumplings when she comes...."
( 4th stanza, She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountains, folk song)
Here in the south where I have always lived, I've noticed that most people have deep opinions, far and wide, about chicken and dumplings. Sometimes it has to do with the region one grew up in or how a grandma always made them. And it has been my experience that you either love chicken and dumplings or you can just leave them for others to enjoy.
Yet it is equally true that if I want to please my husband with a delicious comfort food all I have to do is put on a pot of chicken and dumplings and he is grinning from ear to ear. How can I resist that?
My husband and I have had very distinct differences in how we've viewed dumplings in the past. He grew up with chicken pastry, a rolled-out flour dough cut into wide strips and placed into the cooking chicken stew. While I grew up with dumplings, little balls of sticky flour dropped down into the lightly boiling pot of chicken stew. Through the years though I have successfully made a true dumpling lover out of him.
Simple Dumplings
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
Mix all dry ingredients. Cut in the butter with pastry blender or fingers.
Add the milk. This dough is a bit sticky, you may want to have extra flour for you fingers as you drop the dough into the hot stew. I try to make them no bigger than a teaspoon because the baking powder causes them to expand to nice-sized dumplings.
