Chicken and Dumplings

From Our Best Bites

Chicken and Dumplings
Recipe by Our Best Bites

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 cups chicken broth (1 1/2 boxes or 3 cans) OR 6 c. water + 6 chicken bouillon cubes
• 1 lb. cooked chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces (The rotisserie chicken from the grocery store works great! 1 1/2 of them is usually 1 cup)
• 1 cup sliced carrots (3ish large carrots)
• 2 ribs celery, chopped
• 1 onion, minced
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 handful of chopped fresh parsley (or 1 Tbsp. dried parsley)
• 1/2 tsp. basil
• 1 14-oz. can evaporated milk (fat free is fine)
• Dumplings (see delicious recipe here)

DIRECTIONS:

• In a large pot, heat some olive oil over medium heat and add onions and garlic. 
• Saute for a few minutes and then add chicken broth, chicken, bay leaf, and basil. 
• Bring to a boil. 
• Add carrots and celery and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook until carrots and celery are tender. 
• When carrots and celery are almost done, add chopped parsley. 
• Add evaporated milk. Increase heat to boiling.
• Add small pieces of dumpling dough (probably not the entire recipe or it will be too much), reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for 15 minutes.

One other thing--if you know you'll have leftovers, only add dumplings or noodles to what you know you'll eat immediately. The noodles/dumplings will soak up all the liquid in the soup when you store it as leftovers, so you'll have overly-mushy noodles and chicken with no broth if you don't. The other thing you can do is add all of the dumplings or all of the noodles, and then store the dumplings or noodles separately from the rest of the soup. That's easy to do with dumplings, not so much with noodles.