Ben's Day Wednesday

Grandma’s Chicken and Dumplings

Posted on by Liz

If you found last week’s chicken and dumplings bait and switch disappointing, we hope that this week’s recipe makes up for it. With pointers from my mom that I added to the margins of my Betty Crocker Cookbook in 1987, Ben and I recreated one of my favorite comfort foods from childhood.

This is the back cover of my first cookbook. Let’s hear it for grandmas everywhere! Phil’s mom got me this when I lived in an apartment between Bethel College and their house. (The apartment is now a room in the College President’s home.)

Chicken and Dumplings

8 chicken thighs, bone-in and skin on

Salt to taste

1 3/4 cups flour, divided

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons shortening

1 cup milk, divided

Place chicken thighs in large pot with enough water to just cover them. Add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer, and cook 45 minutes.

While chicken is cooking, make dumplings. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in shortening with a pastry cutter. Stir in 3/4 cup milk.

Drop dough by spoonfuls onto hot chicken, but not directly into boiling liquid. (Optional: remove chicken skin first.) Cook uncovered 10 minutes. Cover and cook another 10 minutes.

Make a slurry with remaining 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup milk. Remove chicken and dumplings to a serving dish. Pour combined flour and milk into cooking liquid and stir. Cook a couple minutes to make a gravy, and then pour gravy over chicken and dumplings.

We served our chicken and dumplings with some of Grandma’s applesauce that we pulled from the freezer, and broccoli. We estimate that this meal rings up at about a dollar a serving, so if you are looking for comfort food that extends its soothing ways to your wallet, look no further!

This meal was so easy to make that Ben had little time to work up any mischief! For reasons I will never understand, my children are not all in on chicken and dumplings. Ben ate it and enjoyed it, but felt no need to have leftovers for lunch the next day. (I, on the other hand, may have not only gnawed on a chicken bone at work the day after, but also brought a spoon, a fork and a knife to fully partake in the gravy, dumpling and chicken extravaganza.) Phil and I both loved this dish as kids, and we still like it now, though we don’t make it all that often.

Chef Ben cuts the shortening into the flour to make dumplings.
Yes, it is a beige meal, which means I didn’t take a close up of 50 shades of beige, but it was good, nonetheless. There’s a slightly darker beige piece of chicken under there.
This is Ben and Sophia with their grandparents after they had spent a week together while Phil and I were vacationing in Argentina in 2006. This is a grandma who knows her chicken and dumplings, and apparently produced a memorable batch that week. When we returned from our trip, I found that Ben, who was not sick at all, was coughing, clearing his throat, and dabbing at his nose with a tissue in a manner consistent with that of a 66-year old woman. He had completely absorbed all of Grandma’s mannerisms! I’m sure that whatever chicken and dumplings meal she made for them that week was superior to anything I’ve turned out, but one day, maybe one of my kids will be calling and asking, “How do you make Grandma’s chicken and dumplings?” And I can tell them all about it.