I often post pictures and recipes of my fancier cooking…so, here’s something a little more down to earth.
(The dumplings are small, because I ate most of them before I took the picture. hah!)
Saute up some diced carrots, onion, and celery (mirepoix).
When soft, push to the side and add some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Sear on each side over medium-high heat, about 5 mins each side for plump breasts.
Remove breasts and let rest 5 mins
While breasts are resting, add 6-8 cups chicken stock to mirepoix. Bring to a boil
Cut up chicken breasts and put back in stock
mix 2 cups Bisquick (Jiffy or other biscuit mix is fine) with 2/3 cup water and form into soft ball of dough.
Spoon into broth and boil for 10 minutes
reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 mintues.
Done! Makes about 6 big servings.
To be honest, I don’t post more stuff like this becuase I figure most people know how to cook simple dishes like this, and would only really be interested in the fancier stuff.
I do chicken and dumplings as leftovers. I often will cook a large chicken for the three of us (including the six-year-old). We’re good for maybe half the breast and a wing and a drumstick at that meal. I slice the other breast half thin for sandwiches and boil the rest of the carcass for an hour or two. I strain it and pick all the meat off the bones and dice or shred that. Then it’s pretty much like Greg’s recipe, only I slow cook the veggies rather than sauteing them, and I also thicken the gravy. I make the dumplings from scratch. It’s something like a cup of flour, 2 tsp baking powder and a little sugar and salt; 1/2 cup milk. That’s off the top of my head, if anyone’s interested in details I can look it up.
I had always thought of dumplings as strictly for beef stew; my wife suggested them with chicken.
This is one of the ultimate comfort foods; great for a chilly gray day or when you’re a little under the weather.
Amusing. That’s what we had for dinner last night, using almost exactly that recipe. Though I didn’t think to take pictures.
And very, very, different than the dish that Cracker Barrel calls by the same name (also good, just . . . different). Since I’m not from a part of the US where Cracker Barrel has restaurants, I had a whole lifetime of conditioning to overcome when I first tried the Cracker Barrel version a few years back.
But then I recalled some ribbing I took a while back for only posting my fancy-schmancy dishes, and I’d just charged up my digital camera (after having lost the charging cable for 4 months) so i figured what the heck.
My theory of “A lot of people know how to do this stuff already if it’s not fancy” seems to be pretty accurate, judging by the thread..
comfort food is simple homemade food like momma used to make. Fancy dishes are nice..but sometimes, you just want to curl up with something homey that reminds you of how you got taken care of as a kid. To me growing up in the South, that’s things like chili, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and gravy, fried okra or fried green tomatoes…that kind of thing.
Dang, but that picture of chicken & dumplins looked good!!!
Keep posting pics like that, you’ll have me drooling into my keyboard…
I shouldn’t have started - I’m trying to keep my weight down and I’m making myself hungry.
No worries…according to the last I read, if you maintain a healthy weight, you can expect to live about 84 years; if you are obese, you can expect to live about 80.
I can remember as a kid, hearing my mom and other ladies tell their tales of making chicken and dumplins.The recipes,the color of the dumplins-grey tinge being the worst- the skill involved. They would all agonize over the dumplin’ part-
the ultimate tragedy being if they sank instead of floated.
Chicken and Dumplins were always spoken of in some sort of awe- as if this was one of the key gages as to whether or not a cook was any good at all.
I think you would be surprised what simple things people have not tried and seem to be in the realm of the supernatural to most. Many think that baking bread or rolling out pasta is exotic. Heck, even with your simple recipe I learned a new word (mirepoixa). Some of the comfort foods that DCrom listed I would have no clue on where to even start.
Comfort foods to me usually involve carbohydrates. Also, there are lots of people who never learned how to cook from scratch or without a comprehensive recipte.
Many years ago, my wife’s college roommate was making macaroni and cheese out of the box. She was measuring 6 cups of water. I said, “Anne, what the @#$% are you doing?” She said that’s what the recipe called for to boil the macaroni. I told her to just fill the &^% pot with a some %^& water. The water didn’t need to be that precise. She never liked me, she said I “unsettled” her.
