When temperatures begin to drop in this neck of the woods, one dish almost everyone craves is a bowl of hearty, made-from-scratch chicken and dumplings. Popular restaurants like Trio’s and The Faded Rose offer the iconic dish as a weekly special, but if you’re looking to make it at home, I found this simple, yet classic version that takes only a couple of hours to prepare from start to finish.
This is the South, so you better believe the recipe incorporates rolled, not dropped dumplings. Growing up in Houston, I made dropped dumplings countless times, but quickly learned after moving to Little Rock that “rolling” your dumplings was the overwhelmingly preferred method.
So, what’s the difference? A dropped dumpling is essentially a small, spoonful of dough dropped into boiling water, thus creating a thicker, softer finished product. In my opinion, dropped dumplings are a lot easier and less time-consuming to prepare than the rolled variety, which require the dough to be rolled out to a certain thickness with a rolling pin and then dropped into the chicken stock. Both versions taste fantastic, so it really comes down to how much time and effort you want to put into the experience.
The above recipe turned out to be the best at-home chicken and dumplings I’ve ever made. I boiled a 3-pound chicken from Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative for about an hour, which created a wonderful stock and fall-off-the bone meat that was later added back to the pot.
If you’re not experienced at working with dough, don’t be afraid to place a good amount of flour on both the rolling pin and cutting board. The flour makes the dough less sticky, and thus a lot easier to roll out. Be advised, things will get messy, but a dirty kitchen just means the chicken and dumplings will taste even better.