Recipe: Miss Bettie's Chicken and Dumplings

Miss Bettie's Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:

8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (see note)
salt and pepper to taste
Box of Bisquick
Milk
Flour
1/2 cup Milk
2 or 3 tsp. butter

Directions:

Place chicken breasts in a large soup pot and cover with water (fill the pot about half full). Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook over medium-high heat until chicken is done. Remove chicken and cut into bite sized pieces. Place chicken pieces back in broth. Simmer chicken and broth on low while making dumplings. Using the Bisquick and milk, prepare as much dumpling mix as you want (as many as your pot will hold) according to package instructions. Coat your hands with flour, sprinkle a little flour on top of the dumpling mix, and roll dumplings into 1 inch balls. Add a little more flour when dumpling mix begins to get too sticky to roll. When you're almost finished rolling the dumplings, turn up the heat under the chicken and broth and bring to a slow boil. Drop dumplings into boiling broth. Make sure they submerge. They'll pop back up, but you need to make sure they get totally wet. Once all dumplings are in the broth, add 1/2 cup milk and 2 or 3 teaspoons butter and poke all the dumplings down again. Do not stir before the dumplings are cooked, because it will tear them up. Simmer for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally but gently (if all dumplings appear to be cooked) to make sure chicken doesn't stick to bottom of pot.

Note: This is my mom's recipe, and she uses the boneless, skinless breasts. I use a whole chicken, because I think it gives the broth a better flavor. Her way is a lot easier, though! If you use a whole chicken, after removing the chicken from the broth, pour the broth through a strainer into a separate bowl to remove bits of fat and foam that have accumulated during cooking. Pour strained broth back into soup pot. Remove skin from chicken, and pull chicken from the bone, then cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and put them back in the broth. Continue with the dumpling instructions as above.