Some nights you do not want clever. You want a lid coming off a pot and steam on the kitchen window.
This is that dinner. Chicken thighs that stay tender, a broth thickened the old-fashioned way with butter and flour, carrots and celery that still have some bite, and drop dumplings that finish right on top of it all. One pot, about an hour, and the whole house smells like it.
The trick that makes this version worth the trouble is small: the seasoning goes into the dumpling dough as well as into the pot. Most recipes leave the dough plain, and you end up with two separate dishes sharing a bowl. Season both and the whole thing tastes like one idea.
October in the Carolinas is good to this recipe. Carrots, celery and yellow onions are all coming in, the parsley is still going, and if you want it fully in season there are collards and kale instead of the frozen peas. The recipe card below has the full method, the dumpling notes and the swaps.
Chicken and Dumplings with Anything With Wings
Creamy one-pot chicken and dumplings with carrots, celery and fluffy drop dumplings, seasoned in the pot and in the dough with organic poultry seasoning. Serves six.
Ingredients
For the pot
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 3 medium carrots, sliced into ¼-inch coins
- 3 ribs celery, sliced
- 2 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp Anything With Wings organic poultry seasoning
- ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
- 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- ¾ cup heavy cream
- 1 cup frozen peas, or 2 cups chopped collards or kale
For the dumplings
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1½ tsp Anything With Wings
- 4 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 1 cup whole milk, cold
To finish
- Kosher or flaky sea salt, to taste
- Crushed red pepper, to taste (optional)
- A handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Instructions
- Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large Dutch oven or a deep, wide skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots and celery and cook, stirring now and then, until the onion has gone soft and translucent — about 6 minutes.
- Add the chicken and 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of Anything With Wings. Stir to coat and cook about 5 minutes, just until the outside of the chicken is no longer pink. It does not need to brown. It finishes in the broth.
- Sprinkle the ⅓ cup of flour over everything and stir constantly for a full 2 minutes, until the flour disappears into the butter and coats the vegetables and you can smell it toasting. This is what thickens the pot, and raw flour tastes like paste no matter how long it simmers afterward.
- Pour in the broth a cup or two at a time, stirring smooth after each addition before you add the next. Bring it up to a gentle simmer and cook uncovered for 10 minutes, until it thickens to about the consistency of a loose gravy.
- While it simmers, make the dumplings. Whisk the 2 cups of flour, the baking powder and 1½ teaspoons of Anything With Wings together in a bowl. Add the cold butter cubes and work them in with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with some pieces still the size of a pea. Pour in the cold milk and stir just until a shaggy dough comes together. Stop while it still looks rough.
- Stir the cream into the simmering pot, then the peas (or the chopped collards or kale, which want 3 or 4 minutes to wilt down before the dumplings go on). Taste the broth and add a little more Anything With Wings if you want it louder.
- Drop the dough onto the surface of the stew in heaping tablespoons, about an inch apart. You should get 12 to 14. They look small now. They double.
- Cover the pot tightly, turn the heat down to medium-low, and simmer 15 minutes without lifting the lid once. The dumplings steam rather than boil, and that trapped steam is the whole reason they rise.
- Check one with a toothpick. It should come out clean and the center should be cakey, not gummy. If it is not there yet, put the lid back on and give it 3 more minutes.
- Take the pot off the heat and let it sit 5 minutes before you serve it — the broth tightens as it settles. Taste it and add salt only if it asks for it. Scatter the parsley over the top, and put the crushed red pepper on the table for whoever wants it.
Season the dough, not just the pot
This is the one move most chicken and dumpling recipes skip, and it is the difference between a good pot and a great one. Plain dough sitting in seasoned broth tastes like two separate dishes that happen to be in the same bowl. Put a teaspoon and a half of Anything With Wings into the dry flour and the dumpling tastes like it grew there.
Cold butter, and barely mix it
Those little pieces of cold butter melt in the steam and leave the pockets that make a dumpling light. Work the dough until it is smooth and you have made biscuits with a grudge — dense, tight, heavy in the broth. Stir until it just holds together and looks shaggy, then stop and walk away from it.
The lid stays on
Fifteen minutes, no peeking. Every time you lift the lid you let out the steam that is doing the lifting, and a dumpling that loses its steam never gets it back. Set a timer and go set the table.
Thighs over breasts
Boneless thighs stay tender through a simmer where breast meat goes dry and stringy. If breasts are what you have, cut them bigger — an inch and a half — and add them with the cream in step six instead of at the start.
What is good right now
Carrots, celery and yellow onions are all coming in across the Carolinas this month, and the parsley is still going. The peas are honestly from the freezer, and that is fine — but if you want the pot to match the season, two cups of chopped collards or kale stirred in just before the dumplings go on is better than peas and is at its best right now. A little chopped sage or thyme from the garden belongs here too.
Feeding a crowd, and the day after
This doubles in a big pot, though you may need to cook the dumplings in two batches so they have room on the surface. Leftovers thicken up overnight into something closer to a casserole; loosen it with a splash of broth and warm it gently, and do not let it boil or the dumplings fall apart.
One seasoning doing the whole job
Anything With Wings is our USDA Certified Organic poultry blend — small batch, no MSG, no fillers, no anti-caking agents, gluten free and kosher. Use low-sodium broth as written so the seasoning sets the salt level instead of fighting it, and keep the salt on the table.
More of the same seasoning
If this is the pot you reach for in October, Harvest Sheet Pan Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Apples uses the same blend on one pan, and Cast Iron Chicken Thighs is the weeknight version. For the big table, there is Anything With Wings Thanksgiving Turkey. And if it is a Dutch oven Sunday you are after, Dutch Oven Pot Roast is the beef answer to this one.