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From leftover rotisserie to chicken and dumplings
Rotisserie chickens are a cheap, hearty staple of just about every busy family household. Most grocery stores sell them for about $5, and there are a million things to do with the chicken. (There are so many things, in fact, that Janet K. Keeler, food editor of The St. Petersburg Times, has a weekly “Rotisserie Chicken Wednesday” post on her blog, Stir Crazy.)
You can turn one cheap meal into another with this easy chicken and dumpling recipe I created this weekend.
Chicken and dumplings
for chicken soup:
1 leftover rotisserie chicken
1 onion
1 carrot or a handful of baby carrots
1 celery stock
chicken bullion cubes to taste
enough water to cover chicken
for dumplings:
1 cup Bisquick (see note below about making your own)
3 Tbsp. milk
salt and pepper to taste
Cut off all the meat you can from the leftover chicken. Pull apart into bite-size pieces and set aside. In a large pot, cover the chicken carcass with water and add onion, carrots and celery. Simmer, but do not boil, for at least an hour. Strain bones and vegetables through a colander and put the stock back in the pot. You can cut up onion, carrots and celery and put back in the pot if you want. As the stock cools, remove some of the fat that rises to the top. Taste the stock, and if it isn’t strong enough, dilute a few cubes of bullion in a cup of water or add commercial chicken stock.
In a bowl, mix the Bisquick or flour mixture with a little milk at a time, mixing in the eggs halfway through, until it reaches desired consistency. (see note below about knife-cut versus drop dumplings)
Add the chicken pieces back into the pot and bring to a rolling boil. Drop dumplings into pot, season with salt and pepper, cover and reduce heat. Do not lift the lid or stir. Simmer for 7-10 minutes.
Serve with a big glass of milk and saltine crackers.
My grandmother is the queen of dumplings in our family and, like most cooks from a certain generation, she uses neither a recipe nor measuring devices. I called her up for dumpling guidance and, as you can see from my notes, there are several ways of doing it:
She uses Bisquick, which I didn’t have, but it’s easy to recreate the mix at home with a cup of flour mixed with a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt and sugar.
If you want knife-cut noodles instead of drop dumplings, add less milk and roll out the dough on a powdered surface and then cut into pieces. The cut noodles look nicer but take up more time and dishes, two things I rarely have to spare.
The drop dumplings don’t look as pretty, but just think of them as rustic, not ugly. Try to get the Bisquick/flour and milk mixture the consistency of mashed potatoes and then, using a spoon, drop into boiling stock. The dumplings expand a little, so aim for quarter-size drops.
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By Barry Popik
December 10, 2008 2:51 AM | Link to this
I’m Barry Popik and I’m a food scholar who lives right here in Austin. I recently did a website entry for “chicken and dumplings”—search Google for that with “slickers” added.