Chicken & Dumplings

& the importance of community care

To be frank my friends, it feels tone deaf to wax poetic about my life and recipes as millions around the country have lost access to their SNAP benefits. It feels particularly cruel for the time of year, when the heart simply craves warm food from a cozy kitchen.

I don’t have objective answers or curated solutions but I do have hope that my readers are tuned in to the needs of their communities.

I myself get lost in all the broken structures of our country from food injustice to health care to the class divide and the list goes on. But what I do know is that it is objectively wrong that people are going hungry in a country that wastes so much food. It is wrong that our neighbors are struggling to eat as politicians wage policy wars. Americans rely on these programs not just to survive but to live with dignity.

A couple days ago, I had a muscle flare-up that was causing me a lot of pain and limited my mobility in my right arm. I felt really helpless and lonely until Sarah showed up. She arrived with a plate of mortadella sandwiches as she embraced me, sympathizing with my pain. She put a pain relieving patch on my back and prepared a hot water bottle for me as we watched Girls for the nth time and reheated chicken & dumplings.

That is community care. Showing up for even just one person who needs it. Being in service to others, especially those in need, especially those who were not blessed with the privileges that many, myself included, take advantage of daily. It really has a trickle-down effect.

Cook for your friends, share your homemade soup with your neighbors, drop cans of food in the donation bins at your local grocery store and look into who needs help in your community. You have very little to lose and it will probably have a grinch like effect on your heart <3333

here is an interactive map of all food pantry locations across Detroit

CHICKEN & DUMPLINGS

Ingredients from recipe testing. No fresh sage in the final recipe.

Chicken and dumplings wins hands down in the cozy food competition. I like this recipe because it isn’t super complicated or precise. It’s affordable, forgiving and comes together in an hour but will have your house smelling like you’ve been cooking all day.

Instead of thickening the stew with flour, you’ll blend up some roasted kabocha squash with the broth and mirepoix to make a hearty, layered base that balances the biscuit-like dumplings. If you have the bandwidth, roast the seeds from the squash with salt & pepper for a tasty autumnal snack. I also use a fun time saving hack to shred chicken using a stand mixer that I learned on TikTok.

This batch feeds about six depending on your crowd. I have eaten it for four days in a row and I’m still not sick of it. I hope you like it and I hope you feed it to someone you love.

Halved kabocha squash & Dutch oven I bought off Facebook marketplace

putting the new whip to work

before & after

forming biscuit dough

This recipe is adapted from The Cozy Cook

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 tbs olive oil, more as needed

• 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts

• salt & pepper

• half of one kabocha squash*, cleaned and cubed into ~1 inch pieces (no need to peel)

• 5 tbs butter

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced

• 1 cup carrot, diced

• 2 celery stalks, diced

• half of one fennel bulb, trimmed & greens removed, diced

• 3 cloves of garlic, minced

• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1 tsp hot sauce (I like Crystal)

• 1 tsp chicken bouillon (I like Knorr)

• 8 cups chicken broth (two 32oz cartons)

• 1/2 cup frozen peas

• fresh chives, chopped for garnish

For the Dumplings:

• 2 cups AP flour

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 tsp sugar

• 1 cup sour cream (one 8oz container)

• 1/4 cup cold milk

• 5 tbs butter, melted

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place your cubed kabocha squash on a parchment lined baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast until the skin is tender, about 20 minutes. Always set a timer.

2. While your squash roasts, put a large pot with a heavy bottom (that you have a fitted lid to, ideally a Dutch oven) over medium-high heat. Pat dry your chicken breasts with a clean paper towel and season generously with salt and pepper.

3. Pour olive oil into pot, letting the oil heat up for a minute or two. Sear chicken breasts on each side until fully cooked. If your breasts are larger, it will be better to sear on both sides and finish them in the oven to keep the chicken from drying out. Turn off the burner, remove the breasts from the pot and set aside. There should be brown bits and chicken juices in the bottom of the pan, you want that.

4. Place the still hot chicken in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix set to the lowest speed. This will shred your chicken quite quickly, about a minute, so stay by the mixer monitoring the texture to your preference. Alternatively, you can do this by hand with two forks. The chicken shreds more easily when it’s still warm, try to follow the grain of the muscle if you want long, thin strands. Set shredded chicken aside.

5. Add butter to the same pot that you just cooked the chicken in and melt over medium heat, stirring the butter around which will loosen up the browned bits. Add the onion, carrots, celery and fennel. Season with salt and pepper and stir, continuing to scrape up the brown bits, until the veggies are soft. About 5 minutes.

6. Add the garlic, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and bouillon, stirring occasionally until the garlic softens, about 3 minutes. Add your broth and roasted kabocha squash to the pot and bring to a simmer.

7. While the soup simmers, prepare your dough for the dumplings by first mixing together your flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Then add sour cream, milk and melted butter. Mix ingredients together gently using a silicone spatula or plastic bench scraper. You want the wet and dry ingredients to just come together. Overmixing will cause your biscuits to be tough. Set dough aside.

8. Using an immersion blender, carefully submerge the blade into the soup and pulse the blender a few times on low. You only want to break down some of the squash, to thicken the soup to a stew consistency while still leaving hunks of vegetables. The texture is very to your preference and if you don’t have an immersion blender, skip this step completely.

9. Add chicken and frozen peas to the soup. Using clean, wet hands, form your dumpling dough into balls, whatever size you like. You can be precious about this and use a cookie scooper for consistent size but I just eye ball the pieces. Place the dough balls in a layer on top of the soup, cover and continue to cook over medium heat until the dumplings are cooked and fluffy, 7-10 minutes depending on the size of your dough balls.

10. Serve in bowls with as many dumplings as you like and finish with fresh chives. It’s worth the splurge on fresh chives, they add a really bright, fresh bite to the layered umami stew.

*if you can’t find kabocha squash, substitute with a dry squash like butternut. I chose kobocha because it doesn’t need to be peeled.