Love & Best Dishes: Chicken & Dumpling Cook-Off: Paula’s Recipe - Dining and Cooking (2024)

– So you ready? – I’ve been ready. I hope you are. – I’m past ready, but you know what’s more important than that? Those folks out there have been waiting and waiting and when I go out, they kept sayin’ “We are still waiting on that chicken dumpling competition.”

– Well hey, here it comes. The reason I was holding off, I didn’t want you to lose a lot of fans and them say, “I thought she was the best cook in the world” and finds out her fat husband can out-cook her. – [Speaker 1] That’s are fighting words, and he can’t even say a word. – [Eddie] Well, after that tuna fish recipe, you’ve got a lot to live up to. – I’ll tell you what though. – It is world famous, that’s for sure. I’m telling you what, a lot of people loved it. Well, may the best man or woman win. – [Speaker 1] So who’s starting off? – Alright, well. – Well I’m gonna be first. I’m going to cook, so good luck. – Good luck. You’re gonna need it. – The words I have for you cannot be said to the audience. Well, y’all, I think my husband is a big blowhard, and I think that he is being way over-confident in his chicken and dumplings. So we’ll see. The real test will be when we take our two containers of chicken and dumplings down to the chicken box at the Lady and Son’s

And just get random people to taste it. They’re not gonna know who’s was who’s, and if he beats me, I swear I will just, so we might have to make it the best two out of three tastes. So there’s not gonna be an an exact recipe because I’m cooking, I’m in it to win it, so I’m just gonna be tasting, puttin’, tasting, puttin’. Now, I’ll share this with y’all, and I think I’ve shared it one time in the past, but I had read that,

You know, we’ve always washed our chickens, but then they came out with something that said you really shouldn’t wash chickens like that in your sink. – [Eddie] Yeah. – Because it brings in more things to get you sick, so, to this day, I’m still not washing it.

So I’m gonna come over here and I’m gonna cover him with enough water for him to cook. Now, I’m gonna put the liver, I don’t think this one has a gizzard, it has a half of a gizzard, and a little piece of a gizzard,

And I’m gonna put that in there for more flavor. Okay, so I got my chicken, I got it covered with water, and I referred back to my very first cookbook. I’ve got one bay leaf, so in it goes. Now, they have this wonderful, I call it a wet base,

A product to me that is superior to the little cubes of bullion. So I mean, I’m gonna put a good bit, because I’ve got, that’s a big pot of water, and I’m about to the bottom of this one. – [Eddie] What did you say? One teaspoon of that equals a cube?

– Yeah, one teaspoon of this. So I’ve got another, I’ve got another jar in the refrigerator that I’m gonna get out, but I’m gonna run some real hot water in here and I’m gonna get all the goody outta that jar. I think that my grand mama didn’t use garlic,

But I am gonna put some garlic powder and some onion powder in this to give us a little stronger base, you know, a little stronger stock, and I’m going to go ahead. Now, when you use these kind of products, a bullion cube or this wet base, you can buy this with less salt,

With a lower salt, but these are not lower, so you wanna be careful that you don’t oversalt your stock because of using the wet base. A teaspoon of black pepper. So the name of the game is to get you a nice, rich stock. You could even add some carrots to this,

But then pull them out, ’cause to me, carrots don’t belong in chicken and dumplings. Alright now, and this is my onion powder, and I’m actually gonna add, add an onion, but I’m using this just as a booster. All right. So I trimmed off the tip of the celery where it had,

You know, been bruised from being cut, and I love using the celery leaves, because that’s where so much of your flavor is, and I just like that color being in my pot. Okay. We’re gonna give this chicken a nice bath, nice hot bath. So this is gonna be just a rough chop. In the pot it goes. Do I have everything in there now that I wanted to put? I really do think I’m gonna go ahead and not overdo it, not overdo it, but just a little, a little Italian seasoning. If I can, there it is.

Just a little. I love to see, I love to see the texture that they bring to the pot. Okay. Now, if I was making a marinara sauce or a lasagna, I’d put probably a good bit more Italian seasoning, but I want, (phone ringing)

I want to do it just enough to bring some flavors to it. Okay. So this is just gonna cream it up a little bit. – [Eddie] It does smell good. – [Paula] Can you believe that he said it didn’t even smell good? (Paula laughing) – [Eddie] It’s gonna be cold here, too.

It’s gonna be good to have tomorrow. – Yeah, Bobby, just told me he’s making a pot of chili, ’cause he said, “Mama, it’s supposed to get cold, cold, cold.” All right, I’m gonna put that in the big trash can so he can’t see it in this little bitty trash can.

See y’all in like 45. Okay, our chicken’s been cooking, gosh, about an hour, I guess, so I’m just gonna take him out, ooh, and I’m gonna put all that good celery back in there. I’m gonna let him cool. All right, I have decided to make my dumplings from scratch

Like grandma taught me, and I hope, it’s been a long time since I’ve done the homemade dumplings, so I hope I don’t cost myself a win. But anyway, here it goes. And this, I highly recommend using the frozen strip dumplings, ’cause it’s so much easier. This is really hard work.

It’s so hard to roll, to roll out this tough, tough dough. But anyway, I’m gonna do it, ’cause I’m in it to win it. You hear me Eddie? I’m in it to win it. I need to put all my seasonings up so he can’t see,

Because he’s gonna be coming in and fixing his in a little while, so I’ll hide all that. I’ll hide that. (Paula chuckling) Alright, so I’m gonna need some flour to roll my dough out, but first, I’ve gotta get my dough, and I’m gonna need ice water,

And I’m not talking about just cold water from your sink, I’m talking ice water, and that’s all the dumplings are y’all, is plain flour, can’t use self-rising, plain flour and ice water. And what we want to start doing, I think I’m gonna take that ring off to do this.

Now I’ve got two cups of plain flour and I’m gonna add my ice water. We’ll start in the center and just start working that in from the inside of my flour and slowly bringing the dry flour in. And you’ll want about a teaspoon. I can’t believe I forgot the salt.

That’s all right, I’ll catch up. Teaspoon of salt to the two cups of, alright, where am I now? – [Eddie] Should be 12. – Oh grandma, is this about right? Talk to me, grandma! Talk to me! Talk to me, Irene! I don’t wanna put too much water in it.

I just don’t wanna put too much water in there because by putting too much water, it makes it easy on me, but it could ruin my dumplings, so. Okay, this takes a lot of strength y’all, a lot of hand strength that I’m kind of missing.

Okay, it’s time to pull out the old rolling pen and start rolling and we wanna roll this out y’all to about, you know, thin, like an eighth of an inch thin. All right, I wanna flour my knife. Alright, let’s see. I think I’ll start like this.

So we’re gonna let these sit here and and dry out because that will help make them tough. Uh oh. So we’ll see. We’ll see what we got. Maybe I need to just test one, you think? Lemme just, I’m gonna just test one. Okay, so I’ve decided to pull the meat off the bone,

And so I wanna make sure that I get all the skin, I don’t want any skin in my dumplings, so I wanna make sure I pull as much of the skin off as I can get. And naturally, you don’t want any, any little bones. The the leg bone has a

Long skinny bone in it like that. Like there, you wanna make sure you get that. And I don’t like veins. I don’t like veins showing up in my chicken, so I wanna make sure I get all the veins out. When Lady Bird was alive, she lived to be 31-years-old,

And it was like she knew when I was boiling chicken because when I got through getting the meat off, I would bring her the bones and she’d sit there and crack those leg bones and take that little tongue and pull all the marrow out of those legs. She loved them.

Not so much loving the other pieces but the leg bone she just loved, ’cause she could get that little skinny tongue down in there and get all the marrow. – [Eddie] And then she would throw it on the floor. I remember. – Uh huh. Clunk! When she got all the marrow out, clunk.

I miss that bird. Alright. Oh, you know I tested a couple of little strips and they turned out nice and tough, y’all, just like I was hoping they would be. So you just pinch this off in the sizes that you want. Now, I’m gonna make sure I want that water

To be boiling, boiling, boiling, and like I said, the flour left stuck on these is gonna make that broth kind of thick. It’s gonna thicken it up. Oh this makes me feel like my daddy and my grandma’s close by. I hope they’re watching me. It was important, daddy,

That I knew how to make your favorite meal. They’ll shrink back up, you know, so I’m just getting them one more time with the rolling pin and it’s probably, probably take 20 minutes, don’t you think? The two trial pieces I did, about 20 minutes? – [Eddie] Yeah.

– And you don’t want to go stirring your dumplings, ’cause you don’t want to tear ’em up. You wanna shake your pan, just like that. That’s all the stirring you want to do. I wish y’all could taste it. Eddie and I tasted the stock and it’s really good.

After I put my chicken back in there, I’ll be adding about a half stick of butter because I wouldn’t be worth my salt as a woman, as Paula Deen, if I didn’t put some butter in there, now would I? I wouldn’t be a very good Paula Deen. Okay, I’m just pressing those down. They’ve been cooking maybe 15 or 20 minutes. I just added about four tablespoons of butter to it to give that yellow cast to it, and I understand Michael is out shopping for his secret ingredients, so we’ll see what his secret ingredients are. My secret ingredients is experience,

But he did tell me he had been on the website lookin’. (Paula cackling) So good luck! Good luck, Mikey. I’m gonna win this thing y’all. I’m in it to win it. I hope (Paula laughing) I hope I’m gonna win it. I’ll never live it down if I don’t win,

But I’m gonna go to the back and do a little something something to get ready and then I’m toting this down to the chicken box at The Lady and Sons and the contest is on y’all! And y’all have been waiting a long time for it, too. So thanks for y’all’s patience.

I’ll see y’all at the chicken box at The Lady and Sons. Hey, y’all, it’s Paula Deen. Now, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and click the subscribe button as well as the notification and bail to be alerted when I post a video. Love and Best Dishes Y’all.