Gluten Free Chicken 'N Dumplings

If my mama is reading this, she's gonna have a heart attack.  'Cause I spent my whole childhood loathing chicken 'n dumplings.  But she taught my kids to like them, and then we went gluten-free, and we've all had tummy troubles... it just seemed like the thing to do..

So Mom-- sit down, I am voluntarily making, and will be eating chicken 'n dumplings. Do you wanna come over and take a picture?

Now I'm sure that this recipe could be easily adapted for the crockpot so that it's not so time consuming, but I wasn't organized enough this morning to make that happen.

So this has been a 7 hour or so recipe.  (With cheating as I'll describe below.)

Hopefully if you want to make this, you'll have a freezer full of chicken broth  like I do. Otherwise, that's an extra step that can't really be shortcutted.

Soup Ingredients:
2 gallons homemade chicken broth
3 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
1 cup milk (I used raw goat's milk)
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp chopped bay leaves
1/2 tsp. parsley
1/2 cup frozen spinach

Dumplings:
This is where I cheated! I used Gluten-Free Cooking School's recipe that I found here for drop biscuits.

Directions:
Take out a big 'ol stock pot, and place the frozen chunks of chicken broth in. Turn the heat on low, and forget about it for 30 minutes or so until it has time to turn once again to liquid.

Add the carrot, celery, thyme, and chicken thighs.  Keep the heat on low, and cook for hours, or until the chicken just about falls off the bones.  Once you get to that point, start making your biscuit dough.  When your dough is made, turn the oven on 350.  Remove chicken from soup and shred.  Keep bones and skin to make more chicken stock!  Return the chicken to the pan, and add the remaining spices, spinach, and milk.  Stir gently and then bring to a boil.  Taste and make sure you like the seasonings, adjusting if necessary.

Using an ice cream scoop, scoop up a bit of the biscuit dough and drop it into the pan.  I started out using full scoops and then realized my dumplings were gi-normous, so I switched to half scoops towards the end.

 You may have to gently stir a bit to make sure they are all able to float to the top.  Then take the whole pot and put in the oven. I cooked it for 35 minutes, but you may actually want to cook a little longer. I just couldn't wait anymore.. the suspense was killing me.

And now I am for certain... I DO LIKE CHICKEN N DUMPLINGS!!!


Serve in a bowl and get ready for a nap after.