350 Bake: chicken

Chicken Soup with Mashed Potato Dumplings

Ingredients:

Soup:

1 Tablespoon oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup onion, chopped

2 cups baked chicken, shredded

2 medium carrots, peeled, washed, and chopped
2 celery ribs, chopped (We don't eat celery so my mom just added a little celery salt.)

6 cups chicken broth

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon sage (We still don't have any sage, so my mom added some poultry seasoning.)

Dumplings:

1-1/2 cups baking mix

1 cup mashed potatoes (Prepared with milk)

1/4 to 1/2 cup milk

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

In a large pot, saute onions and garlic in oil until tender, 3-4 minutes. Add broth, carrots, chicken, and seasonings. Bring soup to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.
In a small bowl, mix together dumpling ingredients well. Carefully drop large spoonfuls of dumpling batter into simmering soup. Cover, and simmer over medium heat for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in dumpling comes out clean. Yield: 5 servings.

On Mondays its my job to make supper. Supper for Monday this week was potpie, a favorite food of mine.

I have put the actual ingredients needed in orange for this recipe.

Chicken Potpie

You need to start with 2 or 3 chicken breasts, baked, or 3 to 4 cups shredded chicken.

I used pre-made pie crusts. You need 1 (15-oz. package) of pie crusts.

Soften them according to the package directions (I let mine sit on the counter while I worked on the rest of the pie)

First work on the veggies. We need 3 medium carrots. Peel them, cut the ends off, and wash them.

Then slice the carrots. Try to keep them all the same thickness to ensure even cooking. Put the sliced carrots in a microwave-safe bowl and add a few Tablespoons of water. Cover and microwave on high for 2 or 3 minutes.

While the carrots are cooking, peel and wash 3 or 4 small to medium potatoes.

Then cut them into small cubes.

Add them to the carrots and microwave on high until both the carrots and the potatoes are soft, but not mushy.

While the veggies are cooking, mince a small onion. (We only had large ones so I had some extra.) We need 1/2 cup minced onion.

In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup (1 whole stick) of butter. Add the onion, and cook over medium heat for about 2 minutes or until the onions are soft.

Stir in 1/2 cup of all-purpose, unbleached flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper. Stir until completely mixed.

-Don't forget to keep stirring the veggies as they are cooking!

Slowly whisk 1 cup of milk, and 2 1/4 cups chicken broth into the butter/flour mixture, stirring constantly until thoroughly mixed.

Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sauce is thickened.

Now would be a good time to shred your chicken.

And a good time to roll out your pie crust. The crust needs to rolled about as thin as you can get it. The idea is to cover the bottom, and most of the sides of a 13" by 9" glass casserole dish with one piece of crust, and use the other for the top, and rest of the sides. After you roll the first piece out place it in your glass dish. Roll out the other piece and cut out the size of your dish. Use the scraps to finish covering the sides.

-Don't forget to keep stirring the sauce, and checking the veggies!