Chicken & Dumplings - Stewed Chicken with Thyme Creme Fraiche Dumplings

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with chicken and dumplings that's right not only is this american classic american and classic it's also one of the most comforting and delicious things you'll ever eat and the great thing about this dumpling recipe is it will work on just about any super stew so if you can simmer it you can make a dumpling on it and here is how you do it so i'm gonna do basically a chicken stew although it's much more like a soup consistency than a thick thick stew and we'll talk about that later but i'm going to put a whole chicken in a dutch oven it's about four pounds i'm gonna throw in some mirepoix that's fancy french for celery carrots onions i just diced them up i'm gonna throw in a couple quarts of cold water i'm gonna toss in a bay leaf and a little bit of fresh thyme we don't need any seasonings at this point i'm gonna put the heat on high and bring that up to a boil and as soon as that starts boiling i'm gonna back the heat down to very low i just want a very gentle simmer at that point we're going to cover this and cook it for one hour after an hour i'm going to take the chicken out put it in a bowl to cool because we're going to want to pick all the meat off the chicken so set that aside all right and while that's cooling we're going to go ahead and turn the heat back to high on our stock it's going to come to a boil and then i want you to take a ladle and skim off about two tablespoons of that chicken fat all right and we're going to use that to make something similar to a roux so i'm going to take a couple tablespoons of that chicken fat i'm gonna stir in about an equal amount of flour just to make sort of a paste consistency when that's stirred together i'm gonna take a couple tablespoons of the hot stock and just stir that in just give it a stir it's gonna start to thicken up and at that point just dump it all into your pot and whisk it in that little step is kind of optional but i think it helps to prevent lumps and by the way don't expect that little bit of flour to really thicken this up i'm just doing this to give it a little extra body and to introduce a little bit of that chicken fat flavor into our chicken and dumplings okay so once that's been mixed in i want you to lower the heat and i want you to keep this at a very gentle simmer for about 15 minutes which is going to be the perfect amount of time to pick our chicken meat off the bones so this should be cool enough for us to handle if it's not just wait all right so i picked all the chicken off the bone every scrap we're gonna dump that into our pot give it a stir at this point we're gonna start phase one of seasoning i'm gonna add some salt some cayenne raise your hand if you're surprised okay put your hands down that's not funny and some freshly ground black pepper all right give it a stir you want this to be perfectly seasoned before the dumplings go on so make sure you taste it and check mine was just about perfect so what we're going to do here is we're going to leave this on low heat just let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes while we make our dumpling batter which is super easy as you're about to see so in a bowl i have some creme fraiche you can use sour cream you could use buttermilk you could use yogurt pretty much any dairy works here so i have some creme fraiche i'm going to add some milk i'm going to add some freshly picked thyme leaves a couple large eggs i'm going to whisk that together and to the wet ingredients we're going to add the last ingredient self-rising flour see i made you buy a bag when we made cobbler i promised we would use it up so there you go if you don't have self-rising flour don't worry on the blog i'm going to tell you how to do it without so we're going to add the flour we're going to take a wooden spoon and we're going to start stirring this and generally you know i don't worry too much about over mixing there's so many more important things to worry about like world hunger and male pattern baldness so i don't get too worked up over it but this is a case where you don't want to over mix stir until almost all the flour disappears if you see a little dusting of flour here and there that's fine you really want to stop at that point all right so don't over mix this so just stir until barely combined and right there mine was perfect okay next step we're gonna form our dumplings which is so easy take two large spoons use one to scoop and one to push off big dollops on top of your simmering chicken mixture all right by the way very important this is simmering you may want to crank the heat up just a hair we don't want a rolling boil but we do want a lively simmer so try to get your simmering like mine is you should get eight nicely sized dumplings by the way do not worry about what they look like at this point when they steam they're gonna look awesome trust me so once our dumplings are scooped over the top and we are very confident we have a nice simmer going we're going to place the lid on and we're going to steam these for 10 to 15 minutes or until done and once cooked they're going to be light they're going to be buoyant they're going to feel real and they're going to feel spectacular oh yeah now if you don't want to touch these which quite frankly i don't understand why you wouldn't want to you can always go with the bamboo skewer method if you stick it in it will come out clean which mine did and that's it your chicken and dumplings are done i garnish with some extra time sprigs on the seams because i'm you know kind of a fancy pants but i think that looks pretty cool you don't really need to let this rest or sit so feel free to bring it right to the table you're gonna scoop one of those bad boys out serve it with your soup or your stew or whatever you boil these on top of like i said this will work with almost any mixture that you can simmer but like i said i prefer a soup like mixture not only do the dumplings steam better but because the dumpling is so starchy itself i don't really need a thick gravy for this okay and by the way if you're wondering what i'm garnishing with there that's a little bit of homemade jalapeno vinegar i'll show you how to do that super easy and that was just like a simple little condiment to give it a little bit of a contrast all right i gotta dig into this thing and you can see how beautiful and light that texture is nothing against my friends in eastern europe but this is not one of those very dense doughy dumplings that you sometimes get this is much lighter and biscuit-like people throw the term comfort food around very casually this is comfort food this has been clinically proven to cure the blahs and certain forms of melancholy so i really hope you give this a try head over to food wishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,024,004

Keywords: Chicken, Dumplings, Stewed, Thyme, Creme, Fraiche, soup, poultry, country, classic, traditional, chef, john, foodwishes, dinner, diner, lunch, entree, Food, Cooking, Kitchen, Recipe, Recipes, Restaurant

Id: dKtySwuIZec

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Tue May 29 2012