Chicken and Dumpling Soup

This week's chef for the Food Network Chef's Cooking Challenge is Bobby Flay. After searching through his recipes, I settled on making Chicken and Dumpling Soup. That way I made my food network recipe and my soup. Two birds with one stone. Now, I have never actually had dumplings before, so this was one of those "I'm not too sure how this is supposed to turn out" recipes. But, as far as we can tell, it was successful. The flavours in the soup were delicious and the dumplings were moist and flavourful. The addition of nutmeg into the dumpling dough gave them a hint of spice that was perfect for a chilly fall evening. We will definitely be making this again. I changed things up a bit - just by increasing the amounts of vegetables and using pot barley rather than pearl.

Chicken and Dumpling Soup - from Bobby Flay
For soup:
2 to 3 tablespoons cooking oil (I used EVOO and much less)
1 large onion, diced
3carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded
4 to 6 cups chicken broth (I needed 8-9)
1.5 cups yellow beans
1 cup pot barley
1/2 tsp celery salt
1 tsp dried parsley flakes
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper

For dumplings:
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup unbleached white flour
3 eggs

In a small amount of EVOO sweat the onion, carrots and celery. I had to look up what it meant so "sweat" - apparently it means cook them over low heat with the lid on. I cooked them for about 10 minutes until the carrots started to soften.

Add chicken, broth, green beans, barley, celery salt, parsley and bay leaves. Simmer until the barley is tender, about 30 minutes. Since I used pot barley rather than pearl barley, I let it simmer for closer to an hour. Pot barley takes longer to cook.

When soup is nearly done, begin the dumplings. Bring the milk and butter to a boil.

Add salt and nutmeg.

Remove from heat and immediately add flour stirring until dough leaves the sides of the pan.

Incorporate the eggs, 1 at a time, forming a sticky dough.

Season the soup, to taste, with salt and pepper. Remove the bay leaves.

Add spoon sized balls of dumpling dough.

Simmer until dumplings rise. Since I had never eaten dumplings before, let alone made them, I read some other dumpling recipes because I felt that this one was quite vague with the instructions. Based on other recipes, I put the dumpling dough in, covered the pot and let them simmer on medium heat for 10-12 minutes. At this point the dumplings had risen and a toothpick came out clean when inserted in the centre. I wasn't sure if they were supposed to remain so moist on the outside or brown up. I think I did it right, though. They tasted good and did not tasty doughy. The FD said they were delicious. He was mighty impressed after his negative experience with soup last week.

Makes 6-8 servings.