As with most grown children, when they come home they want you to cook all their favorite foods. Carissa (my youngest daughter) wanted chicken and dumplings.
There is great controversy on dumplings–flat or drop–in our family.
I grew up with my Grandma Irene Tubbs making the drop variety. I didn’t know there was any other kind until I got married. I will recount this story and then you can all laugh at me, but be kind. Remember I was 19 and only married three months. We started talking about chicken and dumplings. Steve told me how he just loved them, so I thought I would make some for dinner. I called Grandma and got her recipe and was so proud when I served them that night. Until….Steve said, “These aren’t like my mom makes.”
Being the sensitive person I was, I took that as an outright insult and never made chicken and dumplings again. What he meant was Mom made flat dumplings. He said that mine were good–they just weren’t what he was used to. For twenty some years we didn’t have them again. Now isn’t that downright sad? I sure can be stubborn–I can say that about myself. My kids love them and their Grandma Bonnie, Steve’s mom, made them for them every holiday. Finally, after all those years, I started making them again–only flat this time.
Fast forward to Missouri… When I married Harvey, for Thanksgiving the first year, he says we have to make chicken noodles…from his mom Almeda Diggs’ recipe. Family traditions! You got to love them! He makes them totally different from the way I knew how to make them. He made the dough, rolled them out by hand like a pie crust, then rolled them up in a spiral roll and cut the noodles. They were really good.
For Christmas year before last, we got a KitchenAid Mixer and the pasta attachment. It was definitely a time saver, and the noodles were very uniform looking. We tried the recipe in the cookbook, then went back to his mother’s recipe.
Back to Carissa and her dumplings… So now I have to convince her to try the new ones and all she’s saying is, “Mom, I want your chicken and dumplings.”
I bribed her by letting her use the pasta roller and cutter.
The recipe below is Harvey’s mom’s recipe adapted for the mixer and using the pasta roller and cutters.
How to make Mom’s Chicken & Dumplings:
Egg Noodles with KitchenAid and Pasta Attachment
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
4 tablespoons ice cold water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
Beat egg yolks and whole egg together with a whisk until very light, beat in water and salt. Add flour in mixer bowl and using bread hook, slowly add egg mixture. Beat until mixture forms a ball and makes a stiff dough–about 5 minutes on slow speed.
Take ball of dough and cut into about six 1-inch pieces. Flatten each piece, then run each piece through pasta roller on roller adjustment setting 1.
Turn mixer setting to speed 2 and run each piece through to knead. Fold flattened dough in half and run through a couple more times, until dough is smooth and pliable.
Lightly dust with flour while rolling and cutting to aid in drying and separation. Change setting to 2 and run through again a couple of times to desired thickness. Then change to desired size cutter (we used fettucini) and roll flattened dough through to achieve noodles.
This is the finished project hanging on the pasta dryer. Let dry at least an hour. These noodles can be frozen for later but they’re best cooked fresh.
Chicken Broth or Soup
3 or 4 boneless chicken breasts
water to cover
1 onion, chopped fine
2 stalks celery (about 1 cup), chopped fine
1 carrot, grated fine
salt and pepper to taste
Cook the ingredients until chicken is falling apart. Take the breasts out and cut in small pieces. Add back to your broth, I then add a box of Swanson’s Chicken Broth to that so we have lots of rich liquid. Bring to a boil. Add your noodles (I break them in smaller pieces). Cook until they are tender, approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour.
This is one of those recipes that gets better reheated. When you refrigerate the chicken and dumplings, it absorbs all the juice. To reheat–I add another small can of broth to it and bring back to boil.
Get the handy print page and save this to your recipe box here: Mom’s Chicken & Dumplings.
Thanks, Carissa, for your help in making the noodles and being the model for this blog entry.
Ewenique blogs at Ewenique.
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glenda says:
Ahhhh, noodles or dumplings?
Our daughter requested chicken and dumplings for the holidays. Our dumplings are different from either of yours. I don’t know anyone who makes them exactly like Mom and her Mom did. Most ad some baking powder to them. These are pretty rubbery things but delicious!
With them, you just add flour to a mix of broth and milk to make a very soft dough (no egg). Roll them out about 1/4 thick, cut in 2×4 strips. Drop in boiling broth. When near done, add some milk thickened with flour to pot so the “broth” looks like very thin gravy. I usually add back some boneless chicken pieces.
Now my other grandmother (Dad’s Mom) made drop dumplings in her chicken.
On January 13, 2011 at 5:51 am
CindyP says:
Mom always made noodles like Harvey, so that’s the way I make them, too. If we wanted thicker ones, we rolled thicker dough. I knew nothing of drop dumplings until the last year or so….they’re good, too. Just not “like how Mom made them” 😉
On January 13, 2011 at 8:07 am
Kathi N says:
I like both, too. Yum. Thanks for reminding me about noodles and dumplings. That sounds good for cold winter nights.
On January 13, 2011 at 12:59 pm
LauraP says:
Around here, one must be very specific in asking for noodles or dumplings because we make a couple different recipes of both — all family recipes from some branch of the genealogical tree. Each is different but they all good.
On January 13, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Ross says:
I guess I was about fifty-five years old when I learned that some folk call very thick noodles dumplings. We always use a biscuit recipe and with the soup boiling hard gently lay the cut biscuits on the boiling broth and put the lid on tight and don’t peak for twenty minutes. It you do the dumplings get soggy. But properly done you get nice fluffy steamed biscuits with the bottoms well moistened with broth.
On January 13, 2011 at 4:52 pm
brookdale says:
Yes, Ross, that’s the way I make dumplings too. Never heard of noodles being called dumplings until I heard it here!
On January 13, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Pete says:
“Dumpling” in my family referred to any flour based something dropped into a soup/stew! Sometimes it was more like a biscuit, sometimes more like a noodle.
My personal favorite was many years ago, my first ever effort to make a dumpling dish. Shortly after Christmas, there was a lot of left over turkey. Hmmm. Turkey and dumplings? Found a recipe and made them. It turned out to be a thick noodle, and it was wonderful! My Dad went crazy over them – said it was exactly like my grandmother (his mother-in-law) made them, and he thought hers were the best in the entire world!
Noodles or biscuits – it’s all good! But this recipe looks a lot like that dumpling effort from so many years ago, and will be tried soon. Thanks!
On January 14, 2011 at 10:58 am
AuntieAmy says:
So fun to read about-I had a similar story-I was used to the drop dumplings-made with chicken soup-eggs/flour and so when I also was married at the tender age of 19 and while dating hubby-his mother said she was making dumplings. Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t Chicken Dumpling Soup-but the Bohemian Duck and Dumplings-made with sauerkraut and you drizzled the duck grease over it all-WHOA! LOL! I do like them (minus the sauerkraut!) Hers were grated potatoes and flour formed into a ball and boiled in water-then added to the duck/grease and sauerkraut.
On January 17, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Darlene in North GA says:
Some of those old family recipes are the BEST! I think it’s the family connection as well as the taste of the food.
I wish I knew how my Nana who was from Maryland, made fricasseed chicken! I’d watched her make it many times, but was very young and never thought to really PAY ATTENTION to what she was doing. I know she’d cut the chicken into parts, flour it (was the flour seasoned? I know she didn’t use black pepper, none of us like it.), then put in in a pan with a little oil in it and fry it. Did she put a lid on it then or ??? I know at one point, she’d put some water in it and I don’t remember if she put anything else in it. Then she’d put the lid on and cook it ??? long. In the end, the chicken was very tender, in a gravy of it’s own making and the chicken itself still had a coating of flour on it. Wish I knew exactly how she made it.
On January 24, 2011 at 8:54 pm