How to make chicken and dumpling soup

Start with a whole chicken. Clean it, cover with water, celery tips, carrots and an onion and gently boil for about an hour. Once it's cooked, strain off stock and allow chicken to rest and cool.

If you don't want to make your own chicken stock (and just buy a rotisserie chicken and canned broth) you'll need a whole chicken and about 10 cups broth.

In a large pot, melt 4 TB butter and sauté onion, carrot and celery. I used about 2 carrots, 7-8 small celery stalks and a whole onion

Once the veggies are tender and onions are translucent, add all of your chicken stock/broth back to the pot.

Now the seasoning: 2 tsp each of sage and thyme. One TB of garlic salt, and a tsp each of red pepper and crushed red pepper. Lastly, salt to taste. Bring to a boil covered, and cook for 10 minutes

While this is boiling, chop the chicken and sit aside. Once the ten minutes is up, add chicken AND 2 cups frozen corn. Let your soup come back to a rolling boil.

I use gnocchi as my dumplings. And once your soup has come back to a roaring boil, door these in and cover the pot as to cook them

Once the gnocchi is floating on top the stew that's when they are cooked and ready. Here is when add a few handfuls of frozen peas.

Now is the time to add the cream. I had one. can of evaporated milk. This needs to come back to a boil again because you will be adding the thickener next.

In a small bowl, add about a cup of flour

Add enough water that its the consistency of a thick glaze. Almost appearing too thick

This roux will bring the soup together and thicken it up. Use a small mesh strainer and pour the roux thru the strainer into the boiling soup

This is the consistency of the soup that I like. If you like it more thick, repeat the roux process until it thickens to your taste. At this point the soup needs to simmer for another 20 minutes or so

While soup simmers; in a separate small pot I cook and completely cool/rinse/drain soup pasta called acini de pepe. Add this to the soup once it's done simmering and heat is turned off.

I serve this along side the our pull apart cinnamon roll loaf. There's something about sweet and savory that hits the spot this time of year! Enjoy