Dough Si Dough

By Marcelle Bienvenu

Chicken and dumplings was not in my mother’s recipe repertoire. Her home-cooking consisted mainly of rice and gravy, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas, spaghetti (several versions depending what kind of meat was on hand), paneed veal with creamy mac and cheese, fried seafood on Fridays or special occasions, pork roast and rice dressing, or roasted chicken on Sundays—but never chicken and dumplings.

It’s popular in the South, but not necessarily so in Southern Louisiana. I daresay it would be hard to find a chicken and dumplings recipe in cookbooks devoted to Cajun or Creole cuisine. However, I did find a recipe titled “Creole Chicken and Dumplings” in “Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen.” Prudhomme’s version includes his special seasoning mix, which is used to season the chicken pieces that are then coated with flour and fried before being combined with chicken stock, onions and bell peppers. The dumplings are cooked separately in a steamer, and the chicken mixture is thickened with flour, butter and cream. The ingredients in Chef Prudhomme’s dumplings include eggs, onions, dry mustard, cayenne, thyme, nutmeg, rubbed sage, milk, butter and flour.

Chef Paul’s ingredients and preparation are a major departure from most traditional or classic chicken and dumplings you’ll find in other Southern states. As with other such local dishes, the recipes vary from region to region. Much like our gumbo in Louisiana, it seems everyone has their own chicken and dumplings recipe.

Chicken and dumplings are also found in the Midwestern United States and the dish might have come from the French Canadians during the Great Depression. Culinary history also claims that the dish may have originated in the South during hard times when cooks had to make do with the ingredients available.

Basically, the dish is prepared by boiling a whole chicken in water with carrots, celery and onions to make a broth. Once the chicken has cooked through, it is removed from the broth and deboned. The meat is then returned to the broth and simmered for an hour or so while the dumplings are made.

There are two kinds of dumplings in traditional chicken and dumplings, but this drop-biscuit style is more popular in most places. More on the rolled, or “noodlestyle,” dumplings in a bit. Drop dumplings are usually made with all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, butter (or lard or Crisco shortening) and buttermilk. Some cooks season their dumpling mixture with poultry seasoning, chopped fresh parsley and perhaps a sprinkling of black pepper. The dumpling mixture is usually sticky and quite soft, and is cooked in the pot after the broth and shredded meat have simmered for some time.

Friends in Mississippi tell me it is a favorite for Sunday dinner. Other say that it’s great on a cold, rainy evening. At church and other large gatherings across the South, chicken and dumplings is a staple potluck dish because it can be made in large batches (like gumbo and jambalaya) to serve a crowd.

My introduction to chicken and dumplings was a bit disappointing. In Louisiana, good food is brown because many of our local dishes begin with a roux—which is brown. Gumbo is brown. Jambalaya is brown. Rice and gravy is brown. Red beans are reddish brown. Chicken and dumplings is mostly white. The pale, soupy concoction of chicken and dumplings was just not appealing to my South Louisiana eye. Also, the somewhat goopy dumplings were not very appealing. Later, I did have a version in South Carolina that used “dumpling noodles,” which are wide, old-fashioned noodles. These are a firmer dough, made from a few pantry staples and then rolled out and hand-cut into strips that resemble a thicker, wider fettuccini or egg noodle. (The primary difference between a dumpling and a noodle other than its shape is that dumplings usually have either egg or baking powder to make them lighter.)

Typically, like biscuit dumplings, noodle dumplings are dropped into the boiling soup at the end of cooking. This is where good chicken and dumplings and regrettable chicken and dumplings depart: the interior of the dumplings needs to cook completely to avoid the doughiness that made my first experience underwhelming. A friend from Mississippi told me that his family’s chicken and dumplings are delicious because the cook adds the dumplings to the pot, reduces the heat (or sometimes turns it off), then puts a lid on the pot, which allows the dumplings to steam to prevent them from being goopy. This trick works equally well for both styles of dumpling, and is a common variation on the cooking process in homes across the South, Midwest and Great Plains.

Innovative southern cooks have no shortage of dumpling shortcuts, too. A quick method made with Bisquick and milk is so popular that a recipe graced the box for years and is now the go-to dumpling style in many family recipes. Likewise, soft tortillas (cut into strips), canned biscuit dough (cut into bite-sized pieces), and even gnocchi (pillowy soft Italian dumplings traditionally made with potatoes and flour) have found their way into home-cooked chicken and dumpling recipes through the decades.

As you can see, the dish is much like our gumbo and jambalaya: there are as many versions as there are households. How can you decide which one is right? Easy. Make it the way that tastes good to you. There are no hard and fast rules, and there are plenty of Sundays to try new versions for dinner.

Marcelle Bienvenu is a cookbook author and food writer. A native of St. Martinville, in the heart of Cajun country, Bienvenu wrote Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux? and Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine with Eula Mae Dora, and other books and cookbooks. She also co-authored five cookbooks with Emeril Lagasse.