Chicken and Dumpling Foodie Friday With a Story

My mom worked at the polling place each election day and had something ready for dad to serve us when I was little that she felt he couldn't "screw up."  It was a simmering pot of chicken and broth that all Henry had to do was drop the dumpling dough into and we had Chicken and Dumplings every election night.  I never was shown what mom (Grace) did, but this is how I made it this year to bring back the tradition.

Chicken and Dumplings Election Day Dinner (Prep. times 4 hours over two days.  Serves 6)

2 ½ pound whole roasting or boiling chicken

½ red onion diced

3 celery ribs thinly sliced

3 cloves of garlic peeled and thinly sliced

3 Tb. olive oil

1 tsp. rosemary

1 Tb. poultry seasoning

3 tsp. salt

2 Tb. ground black pepper

1 box chicken stock

1 C. water

2 C. boxed biscuit mix

½ C. milk

Day One:

Heat olive oil in a large stock pot or Dutch oven over medium-high.  Saute the vegetables until they begin to get tender.  Remove giblets from the chicken, unwrap and add to the softened vegetables.  Season the breast and back sides of the chicken with poultry seasoning, rosemary and a generous amount of salt and pepper.  Push the vegetables to the sides of the pot and place the chicken, breast side down in the pan and brown for a couple minutes, flip and brown the other side for about two minutes. Pour in enough stock to come up to about the bird’s shoulders.  Increase heat to high to bring the liquid to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for about 2 hours, turning the chicken about every half hour to 45 minutes until it starts to fall apart when it’s being turned.  Turn off the heat, remove any giblets and allow the chicken and stock to cool.  Refrigerate.

Day Two:

Remove the chicken from the pot.  The stock will have congealed.  Scrape all of the stock back in the pot and put the bird on a large platter.  Deconstruct the chicken, pulling the skin off each piece, setting that aside for the pets and shred the meat. Return to the pot and heat on medium high until the stock turns back to liquid.  Add as much water as needed to cover the meat with enough head-room to cook the dumplings.  Stir together the biscuit mix with just enough milk to bring together.  You want the dough to be a bit on the dry side.  Taste the stock to see if it needs more salt or pepper.  When the stock is up to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and gently drop the dumplings by spoonfuls into the stock.  Simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the dumplings are firm.  Spoon a good helping of chicken into the bottom of a bowl.  Gently spoon a few dumplings into the bowl and ladle stock over all.

Leftovers reheat well in the microwave.  If you run out of dumplings and don’t feel like making more or biscuits, you can serve the chicken and broth over boiled egg noodles. Roger wanted to put the leftovers on toast. Ummm.. Wouldn’t that be Chicken S*** on a Shingle?  Sorry, Roger.