Chicken Stew

Recipe Review: Home cooking- just like mom made. This is my comfort food. 

A bunch of times I've blogged about making recipes that we had when I was a kid. We had our staples, chicken and rice casserole, pumpkin cookies, my dads chili, but nothing is a more quintessential childhood food for me than chicken stew with parsley dumplings. It screams cold weather, home cooking, hearty comfort food. When I was a kid we never added potatoes and instead served this over rice. I skipped the dumplings this time because I was feeling lazy but they are super yum, and absorb all the rich flavors of the stew.

Chicken Stew with Dumplings
yield: 8 servings

6 cups chicken stock
5 chicken breasts, cubed
salt & pepper
3 cups carrots, sliced
3 cups celery, sliced
1 1/2 cups onion, diced
3 red potatoes, cubed

2/3 c flour

1 cup cold water

Dumplings:

1 1/3 cups milk

4 cups bisquick

2 tablespoons parsley

Put chicken, stock, onion, salt and pepper in a large pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered 30 minutes.

Add carrots and potatoes, simmer 10 minutes.

Mix flour and water in a small bowl. Stir flour mixture and celery into chicken mixture. Cook, stirring constantly until thickened.

In a medium bowl mix bisquick, milk and parsley until a soft dough forms. drop by spoonfuls onto boiling stew. Lower head and cook uncovered for 10-15 minutes. Cover and cook on low heat 10-15 minutes longer.

printable recipe

This always tastes about a hundred times better the second day, so don't judge it too harshly at first. Actually if you're ambitious make this a day ahead, but quit before the dumplings. Reheat the next day and cook the dumplings.

So I'm finally caught up with blogging! Much less idle time with the new job (which is a really good thing.) I can't believe that October is already half way over. This year has completely flown by.  I got a new issue of Fine Cooking recently and the cover story was Thanksgiving! I realized that by blogging almost every single thing that I cooked for thanksgiving last year I was setting myself up to not have anything to blog this year! I'm pretty strict with what goes on my plate at thanksgiving and don't really like to change it up. The traditional dishes are what I really love. I'll have to try some inventive desserts or appetizers this year so that I have something to write about!