On cold Winter days, Little One wants nothing but soups, stews and chili. In fact, our seven-year old is currently obsessed with chicken dumpling stew!
If she had it her way, we’d have soup every night of the week! One of her favourites is my Dad’s chicken dumpling stew. Grampy’s stew is a Trinidadian Dumpling Stew (can use beef instead of chicken) and includes plantain and sweet potato or yam. Now, I don’t know Grampy’s special chicken dumpling stew recipe, but from what I’ve committed to memory from the flavours I remember, I’ve reproduced. I don’t include the plantain or yam because I sometimes can’t find them in our neck of the woods. This version has become a family favourite in our house, but if Grampy’s making his stew, you know we’ll be over at my parents’ for dinner!
- 8-10 chicken thighs
- water (enough to cook chicken in)
- 6 cups chicken stock, homemade or store-bought
- 2 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 medium sized onion, chopped
- 2 large carrots, cut into bite-sized rounds
- 3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 2 cups corn kernels, frozen, fresh or canned
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 1 can chickpeas/garbanzo beans, 750 g
- fresh parsley, chopped, to garnish
- DUMPLINGS:
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
- 3 tsp baking powder
- ½ tspsalt
- 2 tbsp butter
- ¾ cup milk
- In a large pot, add chicken thighs, cook, and let simmer, covered on medium heat until chicken is cooked. Remove chicken and transfer to a bowl or plate. Remove meat from bone and shred into small pieces.
- Boil chicken stock in the same large pot.
- Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a large Dutch oven over medium heat; cook and stir onion and celery until soft, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle in 2 tbsp of flour and whisk continuously to make a thick roux, approx 2 minutes. Slowly pour in chicken broth and whisk to remove any lumps.
- To the stock, add chicken, chickpeas/garbanzo beans, potatoes and carrots. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Add corn, bay leaf, thyme, oregano, salt and black pepper. Let simmer on medium-low.
- Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, mix together flour, parsley, baking powder and salt to make the dumplings.
- Cut in butter until coarse crumbs are formed. Stir in enough milk to make dough. Dough will be sticky, but you can drop dough into the stew by the spoonful.
- Drop dumplings by the tablespoonful onto simmering stew, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf.
- Garnish with fresh parsley, chopped.
You can cook chicken breasts instead of thighs. Also, if you prefer to use already cooked chicken, a rotisserie chicken (shred the meat into small pieces) will work too if you need to have this done in a pinch and happen to have picked up a rotisserie chicken on your way home from work.
After spending hours working in the freezing cold every day, there’s nothing like coming in for a hot bowl of stew!
This will be perfect on a cold day and it is one of my favorite comfort foods.
Thank you so much for this post.It will be going into my favorites so I can refer to it again. 🙂
Yummy!! Perfect dinner for a snowy winter day like today. I love dumplings.
This stew and dumplings looks and sounds delicious.
I haven’t had dumplings since I was a kid! This recipe looks yummy…I’m definitely going to try it out. ?