Hey! How are you all doing? This is “Cooking with Dave.” I am Dave. I am the world’s greatest chef which says so right here in my apron. Hey today we’re cooking some chicken and dumplings because a lot of people asking how to cook chicken and dumplings. I haven’t done it. I was not sure if I should do it or not. There are so many different ways people cook chicken dumplings. This is kind of video. I've got all kinds of comments on about that the way I do it, then why are you suppose to do it and I know you make dough from scratch and that is okay and that is great. But you know a lot of times I do all that preparation to make a dough. I am not about it. I like things easy, you know, the Dave’s way, quick and easy, cooking good with my family. So I used pie crust. I go to store and I buy pre-made pie crust and I laid it out, cut it in squares. I’ll show you how to do it. It makes life so much easier.

Okay here we are at our trusty stainless steel pot. I have some butter in there. I am heating it up. I am going to throw in some onions. We have butter, two tablespoons of garlic in there, a little salt, a little pepper, give it a stir, to sweeten up with little onions.

Now a lot of people, when they make chicken and dumplings, they will ball their chicken. I am not about ball chicken. I don’t like balled meat anyway. So I am going to put those onions there I have some bone in and skin on chicken breast. I am going to put them skin out and then the onions. It’s been all hot. We’re going to cook our chicken like so, so that we can have our sauce and nice chicken.

If you ball a chicken, it’s just not right. We’re going to end up boiling the chicken some but first we want to cook it so it we can lock some of those flavors into that meat and then when we take it off the bone and put the dumplings in them, then we’ll end up boiling a little bit while cooking the dumplings but it would be all right.

We’ll get a little brown on there. Once it starts getting brown on all sides, we can go in and reduce our heat. Let me turn the heat down for about, I don’t know about three, about four little higher than low and I am going to let the chicken simmer and cook with the lid on it about an hour until it’s done. I want the chicken to pretty done before we take it off the bone and put it on our dumplings.

Okay, here we are back at our chicken, cooking about an hour, just cooking it slow before we get done, just cooking it nice and done. So, I am going to take the chicken out now. Put in the refrigerator, way to cool off so I can debone and put it into our dumplings.

Okay, now we’re going to use the same pot that we used before. So as soon as I take the chicken out, put the chicken in the refrigerator, I am going to go ahead and see if I can drain some of that fat off. Now, I want to keep my onions and my garlic in my juice down there. We’re going to give them lots of flavor. I just want to see if I can get rid of some of that fat. So, I’ll take the strainer. Now I put it in the strainer and strain in out and I put my onions and my garlic back in the pot, less that fat and we won’t have such a greasy chicken dumpling.

Okay, get rid of all that grease. I will turn my onions and my garlic to my pan. I am going to let my chicken cool off and we’re going to debone it and make our dumplings.

Okay, after the chicken has cooled off. I’m going to go ahead and debone the chicken. That is what I am doing now. I am deboning it. I am just ripping it up and here we are back at our pot. I am going to turn my stove on in about medium, eight cups chicken broth. I still have enough, so I’ll finish up the rest of the water. If you don’t have chicken broth, you can just use water, use a little salt and pepper with your water. I am going to go ahead and add some water to that. I am going to go ahead and turn my stove on high. Some big pot will take it a while to boil. So, we’ll just start boiling while we make our dumplings.

Remember, if you want to make yourself some dough, make yourself some dumpling from scratch. Go ahead and do that. It is easy, flour, little water and a little shortening, make some dough and get some rolling pin and then rolling it out nice and flat. I like to make my dumplings flat. I know some people who just drop your dumplings into the water as it is bubbling and I don’t like that big blob. My mother used to just make big blobs of dumplings. If you like the big blobs of dumplings then you can just take your dough. You can drop it in straight into the water like we’re going to do with these and I am sure they’ll be good that is why you like them as fine. I like mine to be flat so I buy myself some pie crust. I am going to take the pie crust, I’m just rolling out here nice and flat and if you make your dough. It will make your dumplings like I make them then just you know roll it. Go get yourself a rolling pin and roll your dough out nice and flat like that right there and then you’ll be able to cut up your dumplings and put them in a water and they will be all so good.

Alright, the way I cut these is make a line, about an inch, maybe a little bigger than an inch. It is up to you. Cool things about dumplings are they don’t have to be all the same size and there is one of our dumplings and I have two of these. I am going to do two of these to my three pieces of a chicken.

Okay our broth is heating up nicely. I got all the onions and garlic in there, flavoring from that chicken we cooked it in there. It smells wonderful. I am going to go and take the chicken I took off the bone and put at right into the pot. I am going to bring all that to a boil.

Okay, here we are coming up to the tricky part of the chicken and dumpling. Okay, you have to get your broth. Get your broth and your chicken up to a nice good size bubble. Put it on high medium high, keep it nice to get bubbled. We don’t want our dumplings to stick to the bottom. So, we get a nice boil going on and we just float them right into that boil and we don’t put too many at one time. Too many at one time may stop us from boiling. So, we just put a few here and there and slowly keep it at a boil and keep those dumplings. Come if you can see them. Turn them around there and cooking and not sticking to the bottom and you don’t want to stick to the bottom.

Okay, after we have all of our dumplings in our pot, give it a little stir. It’s looking good, nobody sticking to the bottom. Everybody is still floating, still boiling. What I am going to do is just want to simmer it. So I am going to turn down to about medium and then put a lid on it. Let them simmer, just until my dumplings start getting done. I will show you what it looks like when they get done. They are going to pop up a little bit. See how they are nice and flat. They’re going to puff up a little bit and give us a little texture and they’re going to taste nice. Turn down to simmer, put a lid on it. Let it sit and I will give it a check here in a minute.

I’ll be cooking a little while about five, ten minutes. Let’s take the lid off, take a look and see what’s going on there. Here look at there, we got the nice big dumplings, big dumpling it up. Let me try one and let me see. I don’t think it’s done yet. They are going to dumpling it up a little more in that. They are going to be a little bigger just cooking it.

Now broth, roll that water if you want a little thin. We’re going to be a little thicker than that. So we’re going to thicken it up a little bit. Now, now we’re going to thicken our broth ever so slightly for our dumplings and everything. I took about half cup of flour, a little cold water and I am just going to stir it in there and I am going to cook that until it all mixes up nicely and give us a little thickening action with our chicken and dumplings.

Now, I’m putting the lid on it and give it about another five minutes just to simmer and we’ll give it a check. Alright, we’ll cook it about another five minutes after I put the flour and water in there. I probably should let it go another five minutes but before I do I am going to go ahead and see if I can taste some and make sure that you know, it is coming along like it’s supposed to. You all know what I am saying.

Okay there we go, it’s chicken and dumplings. Remember cooking dumplings, you know 15, 20 minutes until it’s very fluffing up and then you get some nice sized dumplings and that is what you call chicken and dumplings. Man, it’s good.

All right, so I hope you all enjoyed it, chicken and dumplings. Serve a little corn bread. Kind of the home bread goes along with chicken dumplings great. Grab yourself chicken dumplings and let me know how it turns out. You all have a great day. Thanks.