Hard Cider Chicken + Dumplings
Who doesn’t love fluffy dumplings floating on a rich soup of tasty chicken and vegetables?!
Servings: 2 servings
Ingredients
- 6-8 oz boneless, skinless chicken breast
- 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil
- ½ cup chopped onion
- 1 cups chopped carrots
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 6 oz hard cider
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 ½ teaspoons dried thyme
- 32 oz chicken broth
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1 large egg lightly beaten
- ½ cup buttermilk
Instructions
- Brown the chicken. In a large dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken breasts and brown for 3 minutes per side. Remove from pan and keep warm while you saute the veggies.
- Saute the veggies. Add onion and carrots to the pan, cook for 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
- Cook the chicken. Deglaze pan with hard cider. Add chicken, broth, thyme and bay leaf. Return the chicken to the pan, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Make the dumpling batter. While the soup is simmering prepare the dumpling batter by mixing flour, baking powder, salt and paprika in a medium bowl. Add the egg and buttermilk and mix until a stiff, sticky dough forms.
- Shred the chicken. Once you've finished making the dumpling dough remove the chicken from the pan and shred or chop into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken and peas to the soup and stir to incorporate. Remove the bay leaf.
- Add the dumplings. Using a kitchen teaspoon, drop large spoonfuls of the dumpling batter into the simmering soup until the pot is full or all of the dumpling batter has been used.
- Cook the dumplings. Cover and simmer for 12 minutes or until the dumplings are cooked (they will be firm to the touch when done).
- Serve. Ladel the soup and dumplings into two bowls.
Notes
This recipe makes two very hearty servings. You can get three or even four smaller servings out of it if you want to save some for later. If you are saving some for later, I recommend removing the cooked dumplings and storing them in a separate container so they don't soak up all of the liquid.