I am a huge fan of crock pot and pressure cooker recipes mainly because it is so nice to come home and have dinner mostly made especially after a busy day. I have come to love them even more since they usually require few ingredients and are easy for me to do while kneeling on the scooter.
This portion size is for a 5 and 1/2 quart crock pot which is supposed to make 8 servings unless you have a son like mine whose serving size is that of 4 people by himself.
6 lb chicken, cut up (I usually buy chicken when it is on sale, cut it up, rewrap it to smaller portions, then freeze it....therefore I will use a couple packages of drumsticks and a couple packages of breasts, depending on what I have - but you want about 6 lbs of chicken counting bones so that would mean about 4-5 pounds of deboned chicken.
1/2 c chicken bouillon broth
4 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp poultry seasoning (the recipe calls for this but I don't happen to like the taste of it. I use 1 heaping tablespoon of Emeril's Original Essence Spice instead)
6 ribs celery, cut in 1 inch pieces
3 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 c. packaged biscuit mix (I use Bisquick).
3/4 c milk
1 tsp parsley flakes (I use fresh parsley about 1 tbsp).
Wash chicken pieces; cut away excess fat. Place raw chicken pieces in crock pot with the largest bony pieces on bottom (usually the breasts). Add broth. Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper, Emeril's Original Essence Spice. Add celery and carrots on top. Cover. Cook 7 to 9 hours on low.
When I get home, I combine the biscuit mix, milk, parsley flakes; stir until just moistened. Drop dumpling mixture by spoonfuls (about 8) over steaming chicken; cover, cook on high 30 minutes. (Do not remove the cover during the steaming of the dumplings.)
Serve immediately - when dumplings are at their best.
As a side note - sometimes I make this as is, then cool half and then freeze it in a Food Saver bag - do this before you make the dumplings. Then use the other half of the recipe as the meal remembering to now half the dumpling recipe.
When preparing the frozen bag, drop the bag into a pot of boiling water until it is heated. Dump the water then open the bag and dump the contents back in the pot and heat until boiling. Prepare the dumpling mixture then drop in and cover and cook as above.
