Chicken and Dumplings From Scratch — The American Comfort Soup That Heals Everything

What Makes Great Chicken and Dumplings

The broth has to be rich. Watery broth makes watery soup, and watery soup makes sad dumplings. Start with a proper base — saute your aromatics, build flavour, use good chicken broth or (even better) homemade stock. The vegetables — carrots, celery, onion — are the supporting cast that makes the whole thing taste like a complete meal instead of chicken floating in hot water.

The dumplings have to be fluffy. This is where most homemade versions go wrong. People overmix the dough, which develops gluten, which makes the dumplings dense and chewy. You want them barely mixed — lumpy batter is fine, even ideal. And once they’re in the pot, don’t lift the lid. The steam is what cooks the tops of the dumplings. Every time you peek, you release steam and the dumplings deflate. I know it’s hard. I’m a peeker too. But I’ve trained myself to walk away for 15 minutes, and the dumplings have rewarded my restraint every single time.

Ingredients

How to Make It

Build the Soup Base

Melt butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery. Cook 5-6 minutes until softened. Add garlic and thyme, cook 1 minute. Sprinkle flour over the vegetables and stir for 2 minutes — this creates a roux that thickens the broth. Pour in the chicken broth gradually, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Add the milk. Bring to a simmer and cook 10 minutes until slightly thickened. Add the shredded chicken. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the Dumpling Dough

While the soup simmers, mix the dumpling dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt. Add the milk and melted butter. Stir until JUST combined — lumpy is good, smooth is overworked. If you want herb dumplings, fold in the parsley now. The batter should be thick and shaggy, not smooth like pancake batter.

Drop and Steam

Drop the dumpling batter by large spoonfuls onto the simmering soup — you should get about 8-10 dumplings. They’ll look messy and uncooked on top. That’s fine. Put the lid on and DO NOT OPEN IT for 15 minutes. The steam cooks the dumplings from the top while the broth cooks them from the bottom. After 15 minutes, they’ll be puffed up, fluffy, and cooked through. Test one with a toothpick — it should come out clean.

The Kopytka Connection

When I first learned to make American dumplings, my instinct was to knead the dough. That’s what you do with kopytka and kluski slaskie — you work the dough until smooth and elastic. With American dumplings, that’s exactly wrong. These dumplings are closer to biscuits than to Polish dumplings. The less you touch the dough, the lighter they are. It took me three batches of dense, hockey-puck dumplings before I learned to put down the spoon and stop mixing. Polish instincts are strong. American biscuit physics are stronger.

The result is different from Polish dumplings in every way — lighter, fluffier, no chew — but serves the same emotional purpose. It’s carbs in soup. It’s comfort. It’s what you make when someone’s sick, or tired, or having a bad day. In Poland, that’s rosol with kluski. In America, it’s chicken and dumplings. Both are medicine.

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