Cooking is usually a messy endeavor at best, so it only makes sense to fix several meals at once rather than having to clean the kitchen twice. Saturday morning is a biscuit making day here in South Coon. It involves pulling out the pastry board and getting flour everywhere. As the kitchen would already be a mess, today would be a good day to make homemade potpies and dumpling.
While preparing breakfast it doesn't take much time to put a whole chicken in a pot to cook. Once cooked and cooled, it is time for the least enjoyable aspect of preparing meals- picking the meat from the bones of the chicken.
For the pot pies make up batch of pastry. The recipe consists of two cups plain flour, two-thirds cup shortening, one teaspoon of salt, and ice water. Only use enough water to make mix the dough completely. You don't want it too wet.
Roll out the dough and place in small aluminum pans. (We like pastry on the bottom of our potpies.) To make the filling put your diced chicken in a bowl. Next, add a can of cream of chicken soup, and a can of mixed vegetables to the chicken. Sometimes you might want to add peas or other vegetables. Mix together all the ingredients and place in small aluminum pans to make individual servings. Take your extra pastry and cut strips to place on the top. Now they are ready to bake at 350 degrees or cover with foil and freeze for later use.
To make dumplings take the rest of the chicken and broth from cooking the chicken and put in a pot. My biscuit recipe makes great dumplings but you use broth from cooking the chicken instead of buttermilk to moisten the flour and shortening. Once the dumplings are ready, heat up the chicken and broth. Roll out the biscuit dough and cup into small pieces. You can make them as thick or thin as you like. Once the broth and chicken mixture is boiling slowly place pieces of dough into the liquid. At this point turn down the stove to medium heat and cover with a lid. Don't stir the pot at this point but you might use a spoon to make room for more dumpling. Once all the pieces are in, cover the pot with a lid and let cook for 5-8 minutes. If some of the pieces on top still seem doughy, push them down into the liquid. Remove from heat and leave the lid on as it cools.
As you can see, one chicken can provide two delicious meals. The dumplings will be eaten for dinner while the potpies will be frozen and saved for a cold winter's night when you are really tired. Even better you may save them to share with a sick family member or friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment