Mopick - Posted - 10/30/2011:  19:05:24

My mom came over today for dinner.  She has been at a condo at New Smyrna Beach which is about 1.5 hours from here.  She's going back home to the Little Rock area (Mabelvale), so we wanted to get together again before she left.

My grandma (her mom) was famous for her chicken and dumplings and I had told mom about my chicken-n-dumplins that I make from frozen biscuits so I had to show her, we are from Missouri you know.

Debbie boiled a whole chicken a couple of days age and she picked the meat off the bones for me, strained the broth an put in the fridge in a big pot.

This morning, I put the frozen biscuits out to thaw.  I use Mary B's buttermilk biscuits, they shortening in them you can feel the lump as you roll out and cut the dumplin's.

I had a pack of 20 biscuits.  I used 14 and kept 6 for a quick biscuit later.

I take each thawed frozen biscuit and place it in a bowl of flour and flour each side.  Then on to a floured cutting board.  I roll them out about 1/4 thick and slice each biscuit in to three dumplings.  I stack the dumplin's on a plate until all the dumplin's are rolled and cut.

Meanwhile, I have been bringing the broth up to a rolling boil.  I start dropping in the dumplin's.  They puff up and float to the top immediately.  After all the dumplin's are in the pot I pour in the flour from the cutting board.  Not too much, but enough to thicken the broth.  Then I add half and half, maybe 1/4 cup.  I don't measure I just pour some in.

I bring the dumplin's back to a boil and cook for maybe 10 or 15 minutes until they start getting done.  Then I lower the heat to a low simmer.  When you don't see any dumplins, but just broth they are done.  They have sunk to the bottom.  Stir GENTLY, mainly just to keep them from sticking in the bottom but the burner is on a low simmer.  I set my burner as low as it will go without turning it off.  Now drop in and gently stir in the de-boned chicken and in a couple of minutes you're ready to eat. 

My mom gave them her seal of approval and her fiend Wanda didn't know they were from biscuits.  She thought they were made from scratch.

One thing I do is to put about 2 tspns of chicken bullion in the broth when I put it on to boil.

Edited by - Mopick on 10/30/2011 19:37:50

Mopick - Posted - 10/30/2011:  19:10:25

Oh, and Paddy.  I also fixed your butter and cinnamon baked sweet potatoes.  I fixed them on the gas grill.  My grill has a warming rack so I lit a couple of the burners, one at each end.  I cut the sweet potatoes in half, rubbed a little olive oil on and placed them in the middle on the warming rack at about 300 degrees.  They took about an hour, they were big sweet potatoes.  I put butter and cinnamon on them still on the grill and turned the fires off so the grill would keep them warm as I was finishing the chicken and dumplin's.

The sweet potatoes were a big hit.

Brian T - Posted - 10/30/2011:  22:47:07

Randy: we get both sweet potatoes (yellow inside, look like a potato) and yams orange inside.
What's a "sweet potato" to you? Yams are yummy, sweet potatoes are gross.

I put them (yams) in the smoker for the last hour with the meat. I have to have butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.
Don't notice what anybody else does with theirs.

Tinfoot - Posted - 10/31/2011:  00:58:36

Now I have a plan of attack for the next huge (and often largely wasted) pot of chicken broth that mother has a tendency to make!

Mopick - Posted - 10/31/2011:  05:24:22

They came from Pulix...LOL.  I'm ashamed to say I don't know the difference between yams and sweet taters.  We always used the term interchangeably.  These were good though.  I always thought of a yam as being gnarly looking longer and skinnier, these sweet potatoes were about the size of a softball somebody squishes a little and rolled so it was a little longer than round.

I wish I would have snapped a picture. I have an aluminum grill grate on my gas grill.  It just sits on top the regular grates.  It has raised rails and the aluminum conducts the heat and those rails get real hot.  It makes great grill marks on veggies and steaks which is sometimes hard to do on a gas grill.  I put the sweet potatoes on the grill grate for a few minutes and put some nice grill marks on the open face. Then I moved them to the warming grate to cook at about 300 F. for an hour when they were fork tender.  That's when I put some Smart Balance on them and sprinkled with cinnamon.  I had brown sugar on the side but none of my guests took any and thy said they didn't need it.

Edited by - Mopick on 10/31/2011 05:28:54

Tinfoot - Posted - 10/31/2011:  05:45:05

Don't feel left out; I even asked my mother once what the difference was between sweet potatoes and yams, and all I ever got was "They are about the same thing."