Chicken Dumpling Soup

The dumplings in this soup are different from many soup dumplings. The dough is similar to a cream puff dough and they come out nice and light, yet they swim in the soup like a noodle. Michael Simon has a very similar recipe except he uses chicken fat in place of the butter.

Some recipes for Chicken and Dumpling Soup use rolled dumplings, which are flattened and cut like pastry resembling thick, dense pasta that cooks in the broth; still other recipes use drop dumplings that are more like fluffy biscuits that are cooked on top of the soup ingredients. Both of these types of dumplings are used to make Chicken 'n' Dumplings (the linked recipe uses the fluffly style dumplings). Traditionally, the flat, or "slick," dumpling is a Southern-style dumpling, and the round "fluffy" dumpling is a Northern one. See the recipe for Pennsylvania Dutch "Pot Pie," which uses a noodle type dough very similar to the Southern style dumplings. The dumplings in this recipe are not like either of these two traditional dumplings. The dough is similar to cream puff dough (Pâte à Choux) and are dropped into soup and cooked until they rise to the top.

I don't remember where I got this recipe from but it is very similar to the recipe, including instructions, on the Food Network website from The Lion House Pantry Restaurant in Salt Lake City. Bobby Flay sampled their home-style cooking, inspired by Mormon family recipes on an episode of FoodNation with Bobby Flay. The dumpling recipe is exactly the same. The Lion House Pantry Restaurant's version of the soup has green beans and barley, which this recipe lacks.

For this recipe we used a large uncooked chicken breast, cooked it with the vegetables for 30 minutes, then took it out so it would not overcook. Once the dumplings were done, we cut up the breast meat and added it back to the soup. We also added more carrots in chunks to make it a one-dish meal.

Soup:

In a small amount of cooking oil sweat the onion, carrots and celery. Add chicken, broth, parsley and bay leaves. Simmer 30 minutes.

Make dumplings:

Bring the milk and butter to a boil, add salt and nutmeg. Remove from heat and immediately add flour stirring until dough leaves the sides of the pan. Incorporate the eggs, 1 at a time, forming a sticky dough.

Season the soup, to taste, with salt and pepper. Bring the soup to a boil. Add spoon sized balls of dumpling dough, turn down burner and simmer covered until dumplings rise and puff. I found this took 20 - 30 minutes depending on the size of your dumplings.

8 - 10 servings