Friday, November 12, 2010

Chicken and Dumpling Soup

I found a recipe for chicken and dumpling soup at cause i eats me spinach the other day that looked so good that I had to make it tonight. I used to eat chicken and dumpling soup a lot as a kid, though I don't really know when I stopped. I feel like I hadn't had it in a long time, even before I went veggie and vegan.


Prepping didn't take to long. Just some garlic, carrots, and kale.


Step one was to brown some faux chicken. Normally, I would make my own, but I was on a bit of a time crunch, so I used some storebought that's been pretty good in the paste. Despite appearances, I didn't brown it enough here; little crumbles of it that were sticking were browning, but the hunks themselves didn't. I should've used more oil and gone at it a few minutes longer, but it still worked out.


To the side, I mixed some flour, baking powder, olive oil, and soymilk in a bowl.


Stirred it all up to get a gloopy, delicious dumpling batter.


Sauteed the garlic and carrots in a bit of olive oil for a few minutes. My friend was also using the oven to make a stirfry, so the first few minutes were filled with oil flying everywhere.


Added flour to the oil and vegetables to make a roux. I haven't done it this way before; I always made the roux before I added other things. It seemed to come out okay, though.


Added the water and 2 bouillon cubes, alongside about a half of a teaspoon of each the recommended spices. I forgot to add the salt, which confused me a bit at the end, but was easy to fix.


Dumped in the kale at this point. It cooked down pretty fast. Meanwhile, my stir-frying friend put in some cabbage here, which took the better part of 20 minutes to cook down.


As the kale cooked down, I dumped in the seitan on top of it, then stirred it all together.


I added the dumplings, oversized-teaspoon-by-oversized-teaspoon.


It looks like I have too much dumpling going on here, but everything floats in this soup.


Ladled out into a bowl. Pretty good. The changes I would make are browning the seitan a bit more, and maybe using EB instead of olive oil, but those aren't big things. J also had a bowl, and despite protests that I gave him "more than enough", ate the whole thing (down to the oh-so-classy drinking the broth*).

I still have about three or four bowls left of it, which I'll probably eat tomorrow. Definitely, this recipe is on my 'make-again' list.

*I also did that

5 comments:

  1. I'm writing that up on my to-do list! Thanks!

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  2. I've never had chicken & dumplings soup before but this looks so great, I'll definitely be making this soon.

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  3. That fake chicken looks very real. I got scared for a second. Love kale in a soup. How do you make the dumplings?

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  4. The dumplings are dead simple. Just mix the dumpling ingredients together (flour, oil/margarine, baking powder, soy milk), then dump spoonfuls in the soup. No pre-baking or anything.

    The fake chicken is the kind of seitan that comes in the water-packed packaging. It looks like tofu packages... It's a little bit more (4.50ish) than the other premade seitan packages (usually 3.50ish), but it's really good. I think it's white wave chicken-style seitan?

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  5. this looks awesome - I've got your sister's Thanksgiving cold and I would love some now but too ick to make it. Make some over the holidays when you come home, please.

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