Chicken Soup with Dumplings

This all started out when I bought a lovely butternut squash. The weather's beginning to turn, the leaves are falling, and the temperatures have dropped into a brisk chill. Perfect soup weather. I bought a Whole Foods gluten-free rotisserie chicken, stripped it of its meat, and simmered the carcass to make a chicken stock. I intended that for my butternut squash soup. But oh, the tragedy. I realized that my blender is boxed away in Oregon. Creamy, blended butternut squash soup was not to be. So I retrieved my stock and chicken pieces from the refrigerator and set to work reconstituting them into a chicken soup.

I followed these directions for chicken stock: http://www.soupchick.com/2010/02/how-to-make-soup-stock-from-rotisserie-chicken.html. We ate some of the chicken meat during a separate meal, but most of the meat + all of the stock went into my soup.

Since my stock was now cold, I reheated it slowly in a dutch oven, adding in half a chopped onion, a piece of chopped celery, two chopped carrots, and 5 chopped mushrooms. I brought the soup to boil and then turned the heat down to a medium simmer. I seasoned with salt, pepper, a bay leaf, thyme, and dill weed to taste.

Once the veggies were beginning to soften, I cut up the chicken and added that. I removed the skin first and fed it to the doggies, who were thrilled. You could probably leave skin on, but I thought it might make the texture a bit strange.

Here's the part of my recipe that wasn't a complete success: the dumplings. I love dumplings and I was determined to have them. I wouldn't recommend following this exact dumpling recipe because it turned out less firm and flavorful than I'd hoped. But it's a start, and I will continue to play around with it. In a mixing bowl, I combined: 1 c. Namaste pancake & waffle mix (I know, I know... it's all that I had on hand), 1/2 c. almond flour, 2 t. baking powder, one egg (beaten), 1/2 c. milk (I eyeballed it), and seasonings (salt, pepper, dill). I mixed it into a dough with a spoon.  I brought my soup back to a boil and dropped about 8 dumplings in. The dough was pretty sticky and I somehow ended up with almond meal all over the stove. I clamped the lid on tight, turned the heat down to simmer, and left them to cook for 20 min. without lifting the lid (this part is important, since you want the dumplings to steam).

The dumplings were softer than I'd prefer and lacked some of the starchy goodness that comes from the Bisquick dumplings that I'm used to. I am no baking expert, but I suspect that adding a second egg might help with cohesion. Also possibly adding in some flax meal. All in all, it was a delicious soup and I will keep playing around with it in the future!

(I took this photo after the leftovers had cooled and congealed in the refrigerator. The carrots didn't look quite so much like decapitated goldfish when I served the dish hot.)