October 3 Meal: A Labor of Like

There are several recipes in October's Bon Appetit that require a significant time commitment. I've tried to strategically place those meals on weekends. This particular meal was Chicken, Vegetable, and Dumpling Soup with Fresh-Herb Dumplings from the "Soup and the Single Girl" article. My one memory of chicken and dumpling soup is from childhood, when my mom made it a few times. I loved the dumplings because they were huge, plump, biscuit-like mounds. The soup and chicken were just a backdrop for those dumplings. In the recipe I made here, the soup plays the lead.


First, you start out chopping a lot of vegetables. This is my favorite part. The first summer after we were married, Shaun didn't have a job lined up here in North Carolina yet. I was working my summer internship, so he was nice enough to start dinner out before I got home. He'd have all our vegetables chopped and ready to go into whatever we were making that night. It was a really sweet thing to do, but I finally had to tell him that I missed all that prep work. There's just something relaxing to me about chopping. 

So, for the stock of this soup there's a lot of chopping involved - carrots, parsnips, celery, onions, leeks, parsley, and thyme. All of this goes into a large stock pot with chicken wings, chicken breasts, and chicken broth (see photo). The whole thing simmers for a few hours, but the chicken breasts get taken out when they are done. The sad part to me was that when it is all done you strain the whole thing, discarding all those great veggies and the chicken wings (see photo)! The broth then gets cooled for a few hours.




Meanwhile, I worked on the dumplings. Whole eggs, egg yolks, milk, flour, and butter are combined with the herbs: parsley, celery leaves, and chives. I had just gotten through chopping all those vegetables listed above, so I must have still been thinking I needed to press hard on my knife when cutting the chives. Of course cutting the most delicate of the ingredients I ended up chopping my finger. Ouch (don't worry, not pictured)! The mixture is cooked in boiling salted water. At first, my mixture wasn't quite solid enough, so it dissolved into the water. I added some extra flour and it was OK, or at least stayed together. As the picture shows, these little dumplings look nothing like the ones I described above that my mom made.

Finally, the fat is taken from the top of the chilled stock, added to a pan, and made into a roux. The roux is added to the pot of stock, along with some cubed carrots and parsnips, the shredded chicken breasts, dumplings, and more herbs. It all simmers for a bit and then your done, phew!


All that work was fun, but we weren't that impressed with the outcome. Don't get me wrong, it tastes good, but without those fluffy dumplings it just didn't seem worth it. The broth was very rich and thick and the vegetables were great.  The parsnips add a little something different than your average chicken and vegetable soup.  If you are going for the soup, then this recipe s for you, but if you are a bread-lover like me, you may want to take a pass.

Yumminess: 7 out of 10

Cost: Approx. $30 for "6 servings," which ended up being about 8.  I used chicken from the farmer's market, so that's a more expensive.

Time: Soup: Bon Appetit said 2:45 hours of prep and 7:45 hours total.  It took me about 1:15 hours of prep, 1:45 of cooking time, and 2 hours to cool for a total of 5 hours.  Dumplings (which were done while the soup cooked): Bon Appetit said 40 minutes of prep and 40 minutes total.  It took me about 30 minutes of prep and total.

Was it worth it?: Meh... probably not.  It was good, but not really one of my favorite things.  I can certainly see why people would enjoy it though.