Saturday, January 22, 2011

Gluten Free Chicken and Dumplings


This was so easy it seemed to make itself.  I am the biggest fan of my grandma's recipe for this, but it's not gluten free.  I didn't have anything to go on but the memory of watching Grandma make chicken and dumplings.  So i improvised what I thought would work and Tah Dah!

I like the texture of my dumplings to be somewhere between a dinner roll and a fat noodle.  These did not disappoint.  They were bread-like in the center and moist chewy noodle-like on the exterior.  The best part is, very little effort goes into making this recipe.

Ingredients

3 large chicken breasts
2 cups milk
Celery (a few stalks)
1 bag of carrots
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup washed whole leaf spinach
1 medium sweet vidalia onion
1 bag of frozen peas
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground sage
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon ground marjoram

Dumplings

1/2 cup Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup Arrowroot
1/2 cup Potato Starch (not potato flour)
1/2 cup Sweet Rice Flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Guar Gum
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk


Begin by filling a stock pot with about 8 cups of water.  Put in the Chicken, the spices, 1/3 of the carrots (chopped), the celery, and the spinach.   Boil this until chicken is beginning to fall apart easily.  (I cooked it for several hours, but you can do less.)

Remove from heat.  Remove the chicken from the liquid and shred in a separate bowl.

Strain the remaining stock pot mixture through a strainer and into your dutch oven.  Throw away the solids (cooked vegetables). Add 2 cups of milk.

Add the frozen peas, dice and add the remaining carrots, dice and add the onion.  Add the shredded chicken.  Bring this to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer while you prepare the dumplings.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together thoroughly in your stand mixer bowl.  Make a well in the center for the liquid and eggs.

With dough hooks attached, add the milk and the eggs and let it run.  The mixer most likely will not completely incorporate the ingredients into a dough ball.  Work it by hand at the end.  It's not very sticky at all.

Bring the dutch oven's contents back to a boil.  Pinch off portions of dough and roll in your palms into a ball.  I did mine about 1/2 inch in size.  Drop the balls into the boiling mixture.  They will begin swelling and float to the top.

Once all the dumplings are floating, I put the whole pan into the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees to brown the top layer a little.

At this point it is done and edible.  It just wasn't quite thick enough of a sauce for me so I removed the dumplings, added 2 tablespoons of potato starch and 1 tablespoon of arrowroot.  Stirred this in until thickened and added back the dumplings.

Plate and Enjoy!





10 comments:

  1. This looks really good. We love chicken & dumplings and have only had them once since going gf and that recipe was more like a pâte à choux dumpling.

    One thing I thought I would mention, my family's favorite recipe (gluten filled) also had some poultry seasoning mixed in the dumplings which adds so much flavor. Just for reference it was 1 tsp for 6 cups of flour (it made a lot of dumplings).

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  2. I'm definitely trying this!!
    One little spelling note it's celery STALKS not "stocks" ;-)

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  3. LOL, I must have been in a hurry. Noted and changed. TY.

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  4. I made these dumplings last night in my own Chicken and Dumplings recipe. The only sub I made was using sorghum for the tapioca. I then cooked for 10 minutes with cover off, and 10 minutes with cover on. They were absolutely FANTASTIC. They tasted like BUTTER in my mouth. I will make these from now on, thank you SO MUCH.

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  5. I made the chicken and dumplings last night and "OH MY GOSH" they were the best!! I added some chicken poultry seasoning to the flour mix and thickened the stock (after the baking time) with cornstarch and hemp milk. I used hemp milk in place of the 2 cups of milk also. I had some fresh Kale and put that in when I added the veggies. Thank you so much for this delicious comfort food.

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  6. Was pretty good, I think I will make the dumplings smaller next time they were a bit hard to cut into with the spoon.

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  7. I just found your blog, and holy cow, from a Southern girl, this looks great! Have you tried this using NO guar gum and using flax in place of the eggs?

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    1. Not in this particular recipe but anymore I don't use eggs often and if I do it's just the whites. Flaxseed meal with hot water and olive oil is my standard in everything I make, and most of my breads seem to be better off for it. I still use guar gum or xanthan gum in small amounts though. If you try this one using those substitutes please come back and share your results.

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  8. Anyone ever tried this without having to bake the dumplings? Just cooking them in the broth?

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