Chicken Soup For The Sick Cook's Soul

I've been sick all week, and was craving some homemade soup. The weather finally feels like Fall here, and I've wanted to make this ever since seeing this recipe in the latest issue of Cooking Light. We both loved it - even though I usually make chicken soup with homemade stock, this turned out wonderful and had that homemade feel; I think having the fresh herbs in the soup as well as in the dumplings helped.

There were a couple of firsts in this recipe for me - I've never made/had chicken thighs, nor have I made dumplings without Bisquick. I'm definitely a white meat-type person, but the thighs added great flavor, so I'll keep adding them to my soup, and the dumplings were so easy and used only a couple of ingredients that I already had, I don't need to buy Bisquick again.

For some of the broth I used White Wine & Herb chicken broth, and I think it added a lot of great flavor. If you can't find that, I'm sure even adding a little white wine to regular broth would have a similar effect.

And one final piece of advice - make more dumplings than the recipe states - they are wonderful and you'll want to load your bowl up and there won't be any left when you go back for seconds!



Herbed Chicken and Dumplings
from Cooking Light

Yield: 2 servings (serving size: 2 cups) I doubled the following amounts, plus more flour, salt & parsley to make a larger amount of dumplings

Ingredients:

Cooking spray
8 ounces skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces I used 6 chicken thighs and two chicken breasts
3/4 cup (1/4-inch) diagonally cut celery
1/2 cup (1/4-inch) diagonally cut carrot
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/8 teaspoon dried thyme I used about 1 tsp of thyme
3 parsley sprigs
1 bay leaf
3 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth I used 5 cups of fat-free stock and 1 cup of College Inn White Wine & Herb broth
2.25 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1/2 cup)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup 1% low-fat milk

Preparation:

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook 4 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm. Add celery and next 5 ingredients (through bay leaf) to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Return chicken to pan; cook 1 minute. Add broth to pan; bring mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, chopped parsley, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Add milk, stirring just until moist. Spoon by heaping teaspoonfuls into broth mixture; cover and simmer 10 minutes or until dumplings are done. Discard parsley sprigs and bay leaf. I removed the parsley and chopped it in smaller pieces and put back in the soup.