Chicken n' Dumplin's

I love chicken and dumplings, yet, I rarely make them.  I occasionally order them if we eat out, but even then it's not on my "top ten" list.

Craving chicken and dumplings, I scoured Pinterest for recipes.  Undecided as to what form I wanted - flat, rolled out noodle type vs. puffy biscuit type - I printed a plethora of recipes.

In the end I opted for the nice fat, puffy pastry sort of dumplin's. I still had to narrow down my choices. In the end, I decided to combine two recipes and see what happened.

Here's the end result.  As usual, I doubled this.

The Roster:
Chicken and Sauce
3 strips bacon (I used turkey bacon)
4 boneless chicken breasts - diced
3/4 tsp sage
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp black pepper - course ground
1 stick butter
1 medium onion/chopped
1/2 tsp garlic - minced
1/4 C flour
3 C Chicken broth
2 C milk
1 C Heavy whipping cream (I didn't have half-n-half)

1 C whole kernel corn (I used frozen)

1 C mixed frozen vegetables (I had broccoli, squash, carrots, cauliflower blend)

The dumplin's
1 1/2 C biscuit mix
1 C milk
3/4 tsp parsley flakes

Begin by cooking bacon in bottom of large pot.
Remove bacon to plate - crumble when cooled a bit, retaining drippings. (since turkey bacon doesn't yield much drippings, I added a stick of butter while cooking the bacon -- yeah, I know, kinda defeated the health benefits of using turkey bacon, but...) - this was also part of the combining recipes.
Pour in onion, garlic, and chicken into drippings (and butter).
Cook for 15 minutes - cooking chicken through and softening onion.

Next add the chicken broth and all the spices. (I'd suggest more spices as it was a bit on the bland side)
Add the frozen corn and veggies.  Simmer for 15 minutes.
Pour in combination of heavy cream and milk - bring to a boil.
At this time, I added about 1/2 C flour to help thicken the sauce.
Add crumbled bacon.

While waiting for the chicken sauce to come to a boil - make the dumplings.
Combine the biscuit mix and milk along with the parsley in a bowl.  (I needed to add slightly more biscuit mix to my mixture to thicken it a bit -- in the future I may decrease the milk ratio here.  I'd probably add a touch of garlic and onion powder as well - maybe a bit of pepper too. You know, kick up the flavor a tiny.)

Add spoonfuls of dough into boiling chicken mixture.
Reduce heat and cook uncovered for 10 minutes.
Cover and cook an additional 10 minutes.
**Do not stir while simmering - dumplings will crumble.**

Serve hot.

The finished product - all puffy and bubbly in the pan

Verdict:  Tasty, especially the dumplings.  Probably needed to add more spices for our family.  We aren't huge fans of bland food. This was borderline.  Adding salt and pepper upon serving made it close to what we prefer.

It was creamy and filling.  Thumbs up.

The kids recommended MORE dumplin's. Not sure my pot could hold more.

Do you have a favorite chicken n' dumplins' recipe your family loves? What sort of pot do you use?  My pot just wasn't quite big enough to make the amount of dumplings my crew desired.