Chicken & Dumplings

This is a dish I learned from Ken's stepmom. Being Chinese, my mom rarely made American-style meals and so this is the second time I'm enjoying this. This is SO easy and tasty--reminds me of chicken pot pie! It tastes better after some sitting time, so I cooked it yesterday and served it tonight. (Ken kept eyeballing it last night and commenting how good it looked.) All I had to do tonight was to heat it up, add more broth and follow the directions on the box of the biscuit mix to make the dumplings. There's so much of this left over that we can eat for days (or freeze for later).

• 1 chicken (I got halved breasts & thighs w/ bones in, minus wings & drumsticks which is more like 3/4 chicken)
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 3 Yukon gold potatoes, cubed
  
• 1 vegetable (or chicken) bullion cube
• biscuit mix (follow box directions for dumplings)
• 1 box chicken broth
  

In a large pot, brown the chicken first, then cover the chicken with water and let it boil (about 10 minutes). Once it's done, remove the skin, bones and any fat in between the meat. Pull apart the meat into desired size and set aside. I tossed the bones back into the liquid to get the most of the chicken. Skim away the fat from the liquid. Remove the bones from the broth, toss all the ingredients into the pot then add enough water to cover, bring to a boil, then cover and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Season to taste if you don't find the broth salty enough, and don't forget the pepper.

Only cook the dumplings when you're ready to eat because they'll be too soggy to be enjoyable. The broth reduced by a great deal yesterday so I added about 3/4 box of chicken broth to make the dumplings. Cooking the dumplings basically consisted of dropping the mixed biscuit batter into the broth and letting it cook uncovered for 10 minutes, then covered for another 10 minutes.

I tried making gravy again today and learned my lesson after yesterday's pot roast gravy. This time, I started off with about 2 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of flour, and just added the chicken broth until reaching the desired consistency. We received some lovely soup bowls for Christmas, which I used to serve this meal. Make sure that the dumplings get a good soak from the broth when you plate, and top the whole thing off with gravy. Yum...