As winter creeps into South Texas, I found myself reaching for flavors of home. Don’t get me wrong — caldo de pollo and sopa azteca are great, but when it comes to comfort, I want my Kentucky mom’s chicken and dumplings.
Some of my earliest memories include sitting with my mom at our kitchen table, pulling heaps of meat off a carcass for chicken and dumplings, while she talked about her parents making a new life, the grandparents I would have had, had they both not died before I was born. It all started on a small tobacco and corn farm.
My mother was born in her parent’s home, deep in the heart of Southern Kentucky, where rural families in the mid 20th century made do with they had, depending on the season, weather and pure luck.
Growing up, she told me stories of her family in Kentucky and Tennessee canning fruits, veggies and jams, raising chickens for fresh eggs and meat, making homemade fudge, pies and more, all from the farm. The joy that homemade, hearty food brought, along with spirituality and Appalachian music, made life in a historically poor and food limited region easier.
As more farms were industrialized in Kentucky and the south in the mid-century, my mother’s family moved to Cincinnati, where my grandfather found work as a high-school janitor at the same school my mom eventually attended. They left everything they knew to make a better life for their children and eventual grandchildren in the “big city,” as they called it.
Chicken and dumplings have remained a quintessential piece of country life in Appalachia, the south, and cities with large populations of the Kentucky diaspora. And as a one pot meal with easy clean up, the dish was popular for working farm mothers to make while they tended to the rest of the house, farm and child rearing duties. Although some argue the dish came about during the Great Depression in America, early written recipes date back to the 1870s, and grew out of the Civil War-torn South.
My family’s recipe wasn’t written down until 2019, when I wrote a college senior sociology thesis on the dish and it’s historical complexities in Appalachia. When cooking with family members who had made the dish for decades, there was no need to have a written down recipe. My mom simply knew the dish by memory and passed it on to my sisters and I.
As my siblings and I grew up, we started making the dish for my mom and dad while they relaxed. It was our turn to take the torch. And in my adopted pozole-filled city of San Antonio, making chicken and dumplings, although away from my family, transports me back to a state of comfort and familiarity that's unmatched.
Ingredients
32 oz. homemade or store bought chicken broth
One hole chicken, roasted or boiled with your choice of herbs and seasoning, like dill or thyme
1 can Biscuit dough, store bought is fine, or enough homemade dough for 8 large biscuits
2 celery ribs, chopped
2 large carrots, cubed, or one bag of baby carrots
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 bay leaves
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1-2 tablespoons dry pancake mix, cornstarch or flour for thickening
Instructions
1. Fully cook the chicken with your choice or herbs and seasoning, and set it aside to cool
2. Heat stock on medium and add in chopped celery, carrots and whole bay leaves.
3. As the veggies start to tenderize, form biscuit dough into balls or squares, then bring stock to a rolling boil
4. Raise the stock to a soft boil and drop the dumplings into the rolling stock and veggie mixture. Cook until dumplings are firm on the outside, but chewy on the inside, about 4 to 6 minutes.
5. After the dumplings are cooked, turn the broth down to a simmer. Meat and fat pulled from the chicken can now be added, along with flour cornstarch, OR dry pancake mix to thicken the broth to your liking. Dry pancake mix will add a hint of sweetness. More fat can be added by making and adding a roux with butter and flour or flour and lard before adding to the broth. For a more soup like consistency, use less thickening agents. Skim excess fat from the top of the broth if it's too fatty.
6. Lastly, add seasoning and more fresh herbs, like dill or thyme, to your liking, along with plenty of minced garlic, salt and fresh ground black pepper.
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