Well, the way I do them is kind of time consuming because I cook my chicken first in the crockpot, but it's not something you have to stand over all day. You can boil the chicken, but it's a lot better and more tender if you slow cook
it. I don't have a recipe exactly, but here's what I do:
Take a package of bone-in chicken (split chicken breasts or whole chicken cup up) and season it all really well with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and poultry seasoning. Put it all in a crockpot (I use a crockpot liner first
to make the cleanup easier) and pour a box of store bought chicken broth over it. (If you don't have chicken broth, water and chicken boullion cubes will work.) If the chicken's not completely covered, I add enough water to cover
it. I let it cook until it's falling-apart tender, then take the chicken pieces out to cool.
Once they're cool, I pick the meat off the bones and throw away the bones, skin, etc. I pull the meat apart into chunks....but you don't want them too small or they won't hold together when you stir them into the dumplings and gravy.
Then I put the broth in a stockpot on the stove top to bring it to barely boiling. While the broth heats I make the dumpling dough. Different people like their dumplings different ways, but here's how I've been making mine:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons of salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
I stir those ingredients together in a bowl, then pinch off a little piece at a time and drop it into the boiling broth, stirring occasionally. I usually have some little bits of loose dough and flour at the bottom of my bowl and I just
dump that into the broth. It helps thicken it. I go ahead and add the chicken back in and let it cook for just a few minutes until the broth is thickened enough into a gravy.
We usually have green beans and corn with it, but that's just our preference. :)
