Chicken Fricassee With Fluffy Dumplings

It's cold out there friends and, for those of you suffering the early onslaught of wintry snow we've been hearing about, we have just the stew to warm your kitchen and your spirit - German-style chicken and dumplings! Mmmmm.

This is perfect for when you're homebound and want to fill your kitchen with all of the comfort and warmth that the outdoors lack, and is filled with staple ingredients so you might be able to pull it off without having to go to the store. It does take time though, and is especially fun with a cooking buddy.

We used boneless, skinless (humanely-raised!) chicken breasts and thighs and they were so fork-tender by the time this was done that they just kind of fell apart. We also used cipolline onions again since we all loved them so much in the Breasts of Chicken Paprika. Any chicken and onions you have on hand should do the trick though. And just look at our beautiful veggies! What veggies are cuter than carrots with their tops on? (Sorry celery and cipollines, you're cute too!) Seriously, if you come up with one let us know below. :)

Now here's a handy thing to know after struggling to take the skins off of pearl onions fairly unsuccessfully for the entirety of our lives, and generally avoiding them because of this fact. We didn't notice the first time we used the cipollines, but there are instructions right on the package! And this can work for ANY pearl onions. Just blanch them whole in boiling water for 3 minutes, run them under cold water to stop the cooking (and save your fingers), cut off the root end, and the onion will just pop right out of its skin. Here's a life hack that really does work, tried by yours truly here at Ms. Schnitzel. Avoid these sweet delicious little onions no longer!

We had a lot of fun this particular Saturday evening, multitasking the Chicken Fricassee with the Chilled Raspberry Pudding....

All while enjoying some delicious German beer!

 do what you gotta do when you have sticky dumpling fingers

But let's face it, we are all about fun in the Haus von Schnitzel.

However, we also take our food seriously and were rather shocked at Grandma's Cookbook for suggesting biscuit mix. Not to criticize this gem of a cookbook, which has not let us down yet. Not even close. But we chose to make our dumplings from scratch using this recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/dumplings/

The only adjustments we made were to use Earth Balance, hemp milk and pure cane sugar, 1 to 1 ratios. These dumplings were tender, delicious, and everything we hoped they would be. And since Tara is lactose intolerant, this was a perfect way to make a creamy, delicious and satisfying meal dairy free!

Other than the aforementioned adjustments and the substitution of an entire sprig of fresh rosemary for dried, we followed the recipe pretty closely and it turned out simply mah-velous. Remember, it is very important when adding your flour/water mixture to the boiling liquid to really stir constantly, otherwise you risk clumpage. Not that clumpage is the end of the world or anything.

That's it y'all, get cooking! We promise you won't be disappointed. And stay warm out there!

Breasts of Chicken Paprika

Glücklich Donnerstag (Happy Thursday) from Ms. Schnitzel!

We are 12 days from the Autumnal Equinox (9 days from Oktoberfest!) and if you're not living in sunny LA, that means grilling season will soon come to an end for all but the bravest. But even here in LaLaLand, the advent of fall and the cooling temperatures inspire cravings for slow-cooked, hearty comfort food. This recipe for Breasts of Chicken Paprika is a rich and delicious dish reminiscent of a slow-cooked stew. 

So little did we know when we embarked on this recipe in hot, sweaty August...
  
Tara skimmed the recipe before shopping and interpreted it as sautéed chicken with a quick pan sauce.  Not so much.  But we all agreed that turning Jen's kitchen into a hot sauna for a couple of hours was well worth it once we were sitting on the patio enjoying it!

We also realized after we began that the original recipe was most likely calling for bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (all that was available in 1973?), and that it was probably a good call to scale the amount down to about 3 lbs since we opted for boneless, skinless, humanely raised chicken.  

We already had half a 16oz. bag of frozen pearl onions on hand from Trader Joe's that we threw in the pan to sauté first, and found this fun 8oz. bag of Cipolline pearl onions pictured above to make a pound.  If you can get your hands on some Cipolline onions, do it! Everyone LOVED them.  We wish we had a close-up pic of one of these little guys; they're super cute too!

Our final adaptation was to boil down one quart of organic, free-range chicken broth to make roughly 21 oz. of condensed broth. This is a very simple thing to do: Just throw your quart into a sauce pan, turn it up to a manageable boil, and walk away for awhile.  Check back periodically until it's reduced to about 2/3 its original amount (or whatever the recipe calls for). It worked beautifully! Of course you can buy already condensed broth, but in our experience it's not easy to find free-range condensed broth so we did what we had to do.

Ok, it's time to sear your chicken.  Make sure not to skip this step because otherwise your chicken might be dry! No one likes dry chicken.

 

Schnitzel notes:

* The carrots were so delicious, buttery, and velvety that we would double them (at least!) next time

* Fresh pearl onions are definitely tastier than frozen, but the frozen will do just fine if that's what you can get your hands on

* Please make sure to whisk as you add the flour paste; we were momentarily distracted when adding it and ended up with a few accidental spätzle.  Not that that's such a bad thing...

* This recipe made a ton of sauce.  We served this over fried potatoes (next post!) and, speaking of spätzle, Tara and Rob made a whole batch of it to mix with their half of the leftovers for a German version of chicken & dumplings! So good.  

* Spätzle to be featured at a later date