Saturday, 23 February 2008

• Frugal Friday-Chicken & Dumplings

  

  I'd like to share a very frugal dinner meal that our family has loved for years.

  Our youngest son  and his family are here for a visit from out of state. It's been several years since he's been home. We're so glad to have this time with them!

  So, I've been choosing some of his favorite childhood recipes to make while he's here. This one recipe I am sharing is an old familiar friend that I made a lot during the winter months while my children were young. One reason was because it was so cost effective. You can add as much or little chicken as you'd like. I normally would use only 1/4 of the chicken and save the rest for 2-3 other dinners. This recipe will also freeze well.

  We call this recipe Chicken and Dumplings but it's not the typical recipe with the drop dumplings. I have a great recipe for those but my family prefers this one. These are more of a strip noodle.

  So, here goes the recipe:

  1. Fill a large pot with water and season with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Add your raw chicken (as much or little as you want). Boil until the chicken is done.

  2. Add 6-8 chicken bouillon cubes and let them dissolve as the broth boils. Now, this may be the tricky part for some of you if you're not used to making homemade soup. You need to taste the chicken broth. How does it taste? Is it rich enough? Can you taste the chicken? You don't want this broth to be weak in flavor. If it's not flavorful then you need to add a few more chicken broth cubes (or the equal in chicken broth powder) until the broth in the pot tastes right. You may need to add more garlic powder, salt or pepper,too.  The flavor of the broth is one of the keys to this recipe turning out well.

  3. Now, we'll make the noodles. The size of the batch will depend on how large of a pot of broth you made. I normally double this recipe.

  1 cup flour

  1 egg

  2-4 tablespoons of milk

  Mix all these ingredients together JUST until they are mixed. You want the 'dough' to not be hard and stiff but 'light'.

  4. Next, you want to wet a cutting board (or your counter top) and place a few large pieces of seran wrap on the damp counter so it will stick. Bring over a cup of flour and take a good handful and dust the seran wrap. Next, take out a handful of dough and press it into the flour and then flip it over and coat the other side of the dough with flour. Take your rolling pin and dust it good with flour. Now start rolling out your dough until it's very thin. Flour your dough as you are going. You can't have too much flour because the flour will also help thicken the broth. Take a pizza cutter or a knife and cut thin strips about the size in width of a pencil and maybe 3-4 inches long.

  

   

  5. Next drop your noodle strips into the boiling broth. This may take a while if the dough is sticking. This is where you'll be glad you had a lot of flour on your board.   I had to gently lift the noodles up with a knife dipped in flour because they were sticking. It took quite a while. Boy, had I wished I had used more flour. Boil the noodles until they are done which is anywhere from 20-30 minutes. If the broth is not thickened from the flour in the noodles then you may want to add some more flour to thicken it. I take a tablespoon or two of flour and put it in a small jar (peanut butter size) with 1/4 filled with water. Shake. It should be the consistency of thin gravy. Pour slowly into your broth in the pot stirring constantly. Cook a while longer. It should thicken nicely. Be careful that the noodles don't stick to the bottom of the pot.

  

  If you have any of this dinner left the following day you may find the noodles have soaked up the broth. All you have to do is just add more cans of chicken broth.

  I hope you enjoy this family favorite!

   

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