Join Dale and Cheryl for some chicken and dumplings!
WBCA Podcasts
Cooking In The Dark
It is more of the best of the cooking the dark show. Welcome to Cooking in the Dark. [DING] The kitchen, I will go to the kitchen. And although some recipes I cannot breathe, still I'm sure I can't do everything I need. This show cooking in the dark, it is the key. Pays them out to a topative Texan, you know Cheryl should tell himself. I know Dale Campbell would like to welcome you to this hair show. Cooking in the Dark is a presentation of Blind Mites Megamall, and www.blindmitesmegamall.com. [MUSIC] Welcome to Cooking in the Dark. I'm Cheryl Cummings, and I'm going to introduce to you the man who proves to us every week that you don't need sight to cook dinner tonight. Dale Campbell. [APPLAUSE] Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey. [LAUGHTER] So how was your week off, girl? Actually, it was quite interesting. Well, I was in here cooking and slaving and-- Oh, absolutely. Working. And you were off, does a galley baton? Yeah, that's my favorite thing to do. But you know what? Yes. I won the pot. What pot? We had a bed if you'd come back or not. I said, eh, oh, no, she ain't coming back. [LAUGHTER] You know what? I know where I'd be if I had a day off. Whoo-hoo! Show me so well. Oh, yes. [LAUGHTER] Oh, chachos. [LAUGHTER] We're out of here. Oh, no, no, man. It was good. It was good. Now, I'd like to know how many folks would try that recipe or, you know, I mean, the honey, you know, the oven-fried honey chicken, it's so easy. Yeah. You know, and like we kind of messed around, we experimented a little bit, it's so easy to do. You know, very easy, nice little meal we made. You know, good little meal. Healthy, kind of. I am looking forward to that from my special day. OK. I'm just saying. OK. I'm still waiting for my $100. [LAUGHTER] You know, I was listening to that old XYZ interview we did a few years back. And, man, that was really cool. That was really-- that was a lot of fun doing that interview. We need to post that so folks can get to know the show, get to know us, get to know the show a little bit, you know? Oh, that would be fun. Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody would look that. So I think we would do that. Well, it's interesting. There are a few people I've told that I do this cooking show. And then they mention it in such a way that I have to question whether I actually do a cooking show or not. Because they sound so like, I don't know, skeptical. [LAUGHTER] Or certain-- Man, you know what? Or mocking that I'm like, wait. Maybe I don't really do a show. [LAUGHTER] Wow. What do they know? You know what you need to do? You need to slap one of your business cards on them. Oh, that is so true. That's exactly why I need to start handing out my cards. Yeah, slap a card on them and be done with them. Yeah. Those that are skeptics need not apply. I like that. I think that's the idea. You're at the end of the line. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] When are we recording in the show tomorrow? [LAUGHTER] Always tomorrow. Yes, yes. You know, like you walked in. When was the sale yesterday? I was like, oh, yeah. There's another one tomorrow. Whoa, dang. [LAUGHTER] All right, all right. What are you coming back tomorrow? Oh, it's the day after. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, all right, y'all, sorry about that. We got to go, woo, we haven't talked in a while. You know, she was off last week. We got to kind of catch up. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Funny, it's great, it's great, it's great. Hey, today, we're going to make a-- we're going to make chicken and dumplings. Oh, all a dale. I've kind of-- you know, one of the keys, I think, is the broth, you know? But we'll talk about that, and we'll talk about that. Hey, there was this blonde, and she decided she's going to start a chicken farm. So she goes and buys 100 chickens, you know, little chicks. And about a month later, she comes back and buys 100 more. Well, she comes back about a month later and buys 100 more. And the guy's like, what's happening with your chicks? You know, why you keep buying them? She goes, they keep dying. He's like, really? And she goes, but I figured out why. And he goes, why? She goes, I'm burying them too deep. [LAUGHTER] He's planting them, man, trying to grow chickens. Oh, my gosh. Evan, help us. All right, y'all, we'll be right back with cooking in the dark. We're going to do that, the chicken and dumplings. And I'm going to show you how, too. You can also flip it and turn right and make it chicken noodle soup. We'll be right back, cooking in the dark. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now, more of the show with your host, Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings. All right, y'all. Welcome back. I'm just over here at the pantry, pulling out the ingredients we're going to need. Now, I normally make a big old pot of these, these chicken and dumplings, especially in the winter time. Ah, it's just such a great comfort food. But today, we're going to make half of what I normally do. Because that is a lot. All right. So what we're going to need, y'all, you're going to need a half of an onion. You want that diced up. You're going to need about, oh gosh, two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. And look, I buy them. I don't know the brand name on them, but it's not a local store brand. But it's a four pound bag of frozen boneless, skinless thighs. They also have boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They also have chicken tender strips that are all frozen in these bags. And they reseal. But I like, I like getting these just to work with them. What we're going to do is in our pot, I've got a six quart pot. I'm going to put some of these, these chicken thighs. It's about four pieces into my pot here. We've got it on high heat. And I'm going to add a little water to it, OK? Put the lid on it, let it kind of steam and boil. I'm not going to put a whole lot of water in there, because I don't want them to really boil. But they're frozen, so they're going to have to thaw out a little bit and cook. But it won't take that long. Are you doing that on like low fire or high fire? No, we're on high gear right now. Until we hear the lid start rattling, and then we'll turn it down. I'm going to get my two cup perfect bowl out here. Fill it about three quarters of the way full with water. So we add about about a cup and three quarters. OK. That's going to give us a little bit on the bottom, maybe about a quarter inch or so on the bottom. So that'll kind of start turning the steam. And I want a little more water in there. I'm just kind of guessing off of what I do when I make my full batch of this. Oh, OK. OK. But full batch feeds about 12,000. It's a big old pot. Yeah. All right. While our chicken is going to be thawing out over here, let me get the lid. What at all? OK. So we're on high heat. We've got about two cups, two and a half cups of water in the pot and our six quart pot. And I've got four skinless, boneless chicken breast in the pot. So those are going to start cooking up, heating up here. They're going to thaw on steam at the same time, which is going to be ideal. Then it's going to kind of create a little flavor in for us to toss the onions in with and let them kind of saute just for a minute or two. Just putting the chicken back in the freezer. One thing it'll do, it'll kind of fall out, that frozen-- you know, the frozen chicken. And then when you refreeze the pieces that are in the bag, they freeze together. So if you can get them in and out fairly quickly without letting them start to kind of thaw, you don't have one big old hunk of chicken. Right, no, that's good. All right, we've got a large onion. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So back up. I might have phased out for a second or two here. So you're just using-- you're not even thawing out the chicken breast. You're just using them totally frozen. I'm just throwing them there totally frozen. OK. The heat that's going to generate from the steam, because we didn't fill it all the way up with water, it's going to be a lot hotter than even boiling water. So it's almost-- you're in the-- a couple of the pieces that are at the bottom. But in a little bit, we're going to come back and kind of flip them around. You know, the ones on the bottom will flip to the top. The ones on the top will put to the bottom, you know? So that they will kind of-- but the ones on the bottom are going to kind of boil and stuff. And the ones on top are going to kind of get steamed. So by rotating them around and stuff, they're going to cook all the way through. And then we're going to pull them out, tear them apart, when they cool off, because they're hot. [LAUGHS] Right. Tear them in the chunks and then put them back in. So they're going to continue to cook in the chicken and dumplings, too, in the broth, you know? So we're all good. That's our goal. What I've done is just taken this-- this is a bigger one, and probably about three and a half four inches in diameter. I'm going to cut it in half down the-- across the middle, across the round part. Now I'm just going to kind of peel it off, peel off some of the outside dead layers. I want this a pretty thin dice. So instead of sitting here and doing it by hand, I'm just going to pull out the old onion dicer. Ooh, you like the onion dicer. I like the onion dicer. It does a great job. Got the lid, got the catch tray, and got the dicer. Put it together here real fast. And now because this onion's so big, I'm going to go ahead and cut it into quarters. And that'll make dicing it so much easier. Yep. Now the onion dicer, y'all, looks like, well, like an alligator mouth, would you say? I do say. And then near where the jaws are at, when you open it up, instead of a tongue, you're going to find a little grid. It's about a four by four metal grid. And whatever you want to dice, just lay it on that grid. Phew, push it through when you're here at pop. It has diced whatever you've put on it. This works great for a lot of hard vegetables. Let me dice the other here. It doesn't work real well with tomatoes. I'm not recommended. It's a little-- they're a little soft. Pop goes the onion. All right. So our onion is diced. Wow. That's it? That's-- two seconds? Two seconds. Wow. Half of an onion. Give me another two seconds. I'll do the other one. [LAUGHTER] You know, every time I use this, I think back to when we made that jalapeno strawberry jelly. Man, that stuff was good. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to have to-- I'm going to have to make some more of that here. Spring time's coming. Hooray! It has been 79, 80 degrees in Houston, Texas. Finally saw a sunshine. We haven't seen the sunshine for about 22 years. [LAUGHTER] It came out of everybody freaked out. What is it? It's a sun. Wow. OK. We've had weather that, I don't know if you can imagine, the coldest ice water you've ever felt. And let's say somebody was making you stand in one place and they were just pouring it over you, just pouring. That's what it's been like to walk outside. [LAUGHTER] You know my feeling on that. We should move. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, you get down here after a while. I mean, 40 degrees is frigid. [LAUGHTER] Look, we're shorts in a t-shirt type of community down here, you know? [LAUGHTER] But it was warmer on the island than it was up here in Houston. Just kind of reaching in with some tongs now and just flipping them around a little bit. All right, y'all, hey, we're going to take a little break. We're going to let our chicken get up to speed. It's kind of lagging behind. I thought he would be doing a little bit better. But, you know, I guess he's not related to Hindoor. We'll be right back on cooking in the dark. Don't y'all go anywhere. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now with more of the show, here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell. Welcome back to more Cooking in the Dark. Cooking in the Dark, cooking in the dark, girl. Woo-hoo. All right. And we've got our chicken here flipped and flopped. Now it's time just to reach in and start taking it out. I'm going to turn the heat down to medium-low. I've got my tongs. If you don't have tongs, a nice, long, like a barbecue fork works really well to get in there and get those out. I'm just going to put them in a bowl. Get my big perfect bowl out here. I love these perfect bowls, girl. I know you've expressed that a long time, many times. Tell us why do you love these perfect bowls? Because they're blue. That's very useful for a blind person. Thank you, Dale. With all the features, the ergonomic handle is awesome. The gull wings, so when you're pouring the gull wings on the end, they're on each side of the spout, the poor spout. They kind of extend up off the bowl a little bit. So if you accidentally over pour, like some of us have done, like even sighted people do, it's not just a blind thing. I'm sorry to tell you. It helps funnel it through the spout. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Plus they come in a one cup, a two cup, a four cup, a six cup, an eight cup, and a dollar, no, and a 12 cup. Ah, multiple sizes. Whoo hoo. Ooh, sizes, mommy. Yes. And I love bowls that they fit inside of each other. Yes, these nests for storage. Here's it. They've got rubber bottoms on them. So no slipping is sliding across your counter? They won't fully skid across your counter. Yeah. Oh, so if-- I mean, such a simple idea. You know, rubber on the bottom of a bowl. Oh, what a great idea. [LAUGHTER] OK, I've got our onions here, Cheryl. I've taken the chicken out. Yes. We've got probably about a-- oh, about-- I'm going to put them around in there. Now, do we want to put carrots in this? Do you have carrots? Yeah, I've got some baby carrots. Toss them in. Toss them in. Yeah, we're going to let these onions get in there just for a little bit. It's still nice and hot in there. Bring our heat up just a little bit. We're going to go up to about medium on our heat now, y'all. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let me find our carrots. I was in here monkeying around in the fridge, and moved some stuff around. I forgot where it went. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. We've been doing cleaning up in the warehouse, and it's always fascinating. You find some after-- especially after Christmas, it gets kind of busy. And I was wondering where this was. Had a utility knife. You know, a box cutter that I'd lost. I'm like, man, where did that go? You found it? And it-- yeah, like four shells down from where I dropped it at. You know, I'm like, wow. This baby traveled. Well, I have discovered that I am actually a bit of a pack wrap. And so-- You're a hoarder. It looks like it. And so-- Tossing in the baby carrots. Tossing in about a cup of baby carrots. I love it. And we're going to just let that kind of be the base. So our base onions and carrots-- Now, the fun part is the seasoning, OK? The seasoning of the broth. To me, the broth is one of the most important things. My grandma taught me that when she used to make homemade egg noodles, she said the broth is the most important. So she used to boil a chicken and do all this, that, and the other. And I've kind of-- I'm lazy. I want the flavor, but I don't want the work. You know what I mean? Now, I still will boil a chicken from time to time, and, you know, take all the bones and everything out of it, and use the boilings for my broth. But it's only an hour long show. [LAUGHTER] That does take a little while. So I've got a 24-ounce box of chicken broth. We're going to pour that into our pot. Remember, we've already got about two cups of water. The reason I say this, you always want to think about how much you're putting in. You know, you've got a six-quart pot. So right now, we're up to a little over a quart. Right. Like five cups. OK. Now, we're also going to add one can of cream of chicken soup. And I'm going to add four cups-- well, four cups, four cans, soup cans of water. OK. OK. So you put in the soup. This is what are you saying? But one can of cream of chicken soup. OK. 24 ounces, one box, 24-ounce box of chicken broth. If you don't have the boxes, then I think they come in 15-ounce cans. They do, yes. Put those in. It's all good. All right. Now, we're going to add-- I start off adding about two teaspoons of salt. OK. And the salt, you want to adjust to your taste, OK? I say start off with a couple teaspoons, because you're going to need it. I think you're going to need it. If you don't, then don't put any in. You know your taste. OK. Stir this up a little bit. Stirring, stirring. Let's get a little taste of it here. OK. Needs a little more salt to my taste. I'm at a couple more tablespoons. T-spoons, just a couple more teaspoons. OK. Now, this little restaurant we go to, they have some soups of chicken noodle soup, and chicken, and potato, and shrimp. Anyway, all their soups, the broth, is a little bit spicy. I like it. So I'm going to add one teaspoon of white pepper. And white pepper is a little smoky. It'll give a nice little kick. It won't be too harsh. Yeah, white pepper is pretty hot. So you might, again, to taste, you know, you might want to start off with like a half a teaspoon. And if you want a little more, add a little bit more to it. You can always add more. You can't take away, you know? It's like when you're woodworking, building a house, you know, hey, bring me that wood stretcher. Ain't no such thing as a wood stretcher. You got it too short. Bring me another piece of wood, man. Did you get that wood stretcher? You got it. One time I made potato soup, y'all. And somehow, I overmeasured the salt, put too much salt in it. I was like, oh, crap. My wife's like, what's the matter? I go, well, our potato soup's too salty. And she goes, well, how do you make it less salty? I go, add more potatoes. And I go, put potatoes in it. She started laughing. And I was like, yeah, and I go, I use all the potatoes. So we put that on hold before we could buy more potatoes the next day and put in there. Crazy. Welcome to my world. OK. Now, while this is all getting ready to come together, let's make the dumplings, girl. Ooh, dumplings, yeah. When you're at this point right here, what I'm waiting to have done, I'm waiting for my chicken to cool a little bit more so that I can tear it, shred it, and put it back into the broth. Now, I'm also going to-- you know what? I'm going to stick these in the refrigerator, just so we can start getting them to cool down. OK. At this point, we're going to put the chicken back in. But a lot of people will stop here with what they have. And if they want some dumplings, they'll heat up some dumplings, you know, because the dumplings have to cook for about 15 minutes. Mm-hmm. So you can pour some of this broth into a saucepan, and if you just want a bowl of dumplings. If you want chicken noodle soup, you can throw noodles in it. You make chicken noodle soup. I like putting in pinna pasta. Ooh, I like that. You know, about a cup to two cups, and a cup. You don't want to overpower it, you know? Right. Just enough to accent it. In this recipe, maybe a half a cup. And then next time, if you want more, put more in there, you know? Experiment with it. But so far, we've got about two cups of water in the bottom that we steamed our chicken, and steamed and boiled our chicken. We've got 24 ounces of chicken broth, one can of cream of chicken soup. And then we added four cans, which those are 10 ounce cans. So we added about, oh, five cups of water. And that's where we're at right now, our chicken is cooling, and we're going to make some dumplings. So I'm going to need some flour. All right, right. Little baking soda? No. Powder, powder, baking powder. [LAUGHING] So flour, baking powder, salt, milk. And an egg or two. Yeah. Now, this recipe that Cheryl's about to read you all, it doubles really nicely as well. Oh, OK. Just saying. No. Oh, you're not like trying to get people to invite you over or anything like that, right? If you're making a little make a bunch, I'll be there. [LAUGHING] Yeah. All right. So can I read the recipe? Yeah. You sure? Yeah, go ahead. All right. Here we go, dumplings. One cup of flour. Two teaspoons of baking powder. Half a teaspoon of salt. Half a cup of milk. Two tablespoons of salad oil. And I think that's it. No egg. That'd be it. No, I threw you off with the egg. I know. You were paying attention. You had me looking up like, am I missing a line? Am I missing a line? What the? [LAUGHING] Wow. This is going to be tough. Once you've got the dumplings in the pot, it says, do not lift the lid until it is through boiling. Yeah. Oh, 15 minutes. I don't know. Well, you'll have to distract myself with something else. Another glass of wine? Probably. All right. Well, if you're poor, I'll take one, too. [LAUGHING] All right. One cup of flour. Yes. And a cup of-- A cup of-- Two teaspoons of baking powder. Baking powder, yes. All right. Baking powder. Yeah, I told my wife what we were making. She goes, you can go ahead and make a batch for home, too. [LAUGHING] Ah, now I understand why they're two pots going. Yes. Yeah. All right. I gotcha. There's a little bit of-- I'm sorry, I'm sorry. [LAUGHING] Now we need to add a little salt. Yes, just about a half a teaspoon of salt. OK. Baking powder is done. Some vegetable oil. Two tablespoons, correct? Yes. No, they said salad oil. That's vegetable oil, right? Yeah. OK. Yeah. Or could you use olive oil if you wanted to? Yes, you sure could. OK. In fact, we're probably just going to do that. OK. And then a half a cup of milk. Half absolutely. And what we want to do is when we mix this up, you might want to add just a little bit of flour. Yes. As the-- you want these to be not flour-y, but not sticky. OK? Mm-hmm. You want to be able to just kind of spoon them off right on in. Right on in. And they will expand a little bit when they-- Oh, when they boil or cook. Yeah. And I don't use a spoon. I use my hands. I just tear them off in the piece. Oh, so you just pull off a bit to roll it out. Yeah. Sometimes I roll it. Sometimes I just toss it in. Oh, cool. You know? So the dumplings aren't all-- they're different sizes. They pretty much all cook up around, though. Right. You know? So the one thing is you just got to make sure you kind of keep them uniform. Mm-hmm. Now, Brian, if you're listening, Brian Peterson, this would be a great recipe for you to try. I think you'll enjoy making it. Who is Brian Peterson? He's a gentleman that sent us an email that said he really didn't have an interest in learning how to cook and cooking and stuff until he heard the show and he kind of realized that, you know, he heard some recipes that he thinks he, you know, that he can-- he's going to try to make and stuff. That is lovely. Isn't that awesome? That is so nice to hear. I mean, yeah. Congrats to him for, you know, getting up and, like I said, get up and boil some water, man. Get in the kitchen. Right or wrong, you know? Yeah. Right or wrong. All right. Let me get a spoonie here. We're just going to start mixing our dough up. Okay. It's still too sticky. Okay. So you're going to add a little bit. And a little bit, I'm probably going to add about two tablespoons. I mean, that's about how sticky it feels. And again, I might be a little-- I'd rather underestimate than overestimate. That's feeling a little bit better. The first part was so sticky that, I mean, even just-- it even stuck to the spoon. So I knew that was way too sticky. This right now is, after I've worked it a little bit, it's still just a tad bit too sticky. So I'm going to go about another tablespoon. And again, this way, y'all, you add just a little bit of flour at a time. And you want to work the dough until it's almost-- you definitely don't want it crumbly, okay? Right. Like right now, I can squeeze it into-- I'm just kind of squeezing it into a ball into my palm. And it's kind of oozing out between my fingers. And it's not sticking to them. Oh. You know, my fingertips are anything. So that is perfect. So you're ready. I'm ready. We're right where we need to be. Awesome. So we're going to shred our chicken down. Our chicken should be cool off enough now. Let me wash the stove off our hands. And I'm going to turn the heat up on our broth so it comes up to a boil. In fact, it's boiling right now. All right. Our chicken. And this, I'm just pulling apart into like bite-sized pieces, y'all. I'm just pulling apart the-- with my fingers. If you want to cut it, put it on a cutting board and cut it into chunks, do that. The one thing I'm looking for, I don't want pieces that are, you know, three or four inches long. I want to keep them all about an inch and a half or so. Right. And size or smaller. And then how are you going to get them into the pot? I'm going to say, get the pot. And being the good chicken that is, they're going to go, okay. Yeah. I'll just jump right in, yeah. They're going to march right in there, just like ten soldiers. No, I've got them. I'm still-- I put them in, you know, the perfect bowl. Okay. And I'm just tearing them up right now in that bowl. And I'm down to another piece. And by tearing them up, too, you can definitely tell the doneness of the chicken. If a piece is done all the way through, it tears very easily. Oh, it comes out, yeah. If not, it'll be just a little bit hard to tear. Like that piece was done, it just tore right in half easily. Right. But in this instance, because you're going to cook these some more, don't panic. Yeah, it's okay. And you're like, oh, it just didn't cook as much as it should have. Yeah, yeah. It will cook through. Because when you're tearing them into smaller pieces, okay? Right. So by doing that, you're going to actually allow them to cook through. I'm just reaching down and I've got two more to tear up. Okay. That one was nice. Now, I've also made this before, y'all, and instead of dicing up the onion, I use the hand mandolin and sliced them on the second setting, which was pretty dug on thin. And then kind of dice, you know, cut them down into more or less quarters. Mm-hmm. You'll have each slice kind of cut that in the fourths and put that in. So there were some longer pieces of real thin onion. That was pretty tasty and it's a little bit different flavor to it. Right. But I do that more when I make the soups, not the dumpling. The dumpling, I want the onion to be in there for flavor, but I want it to kind of be hidden. So that's why sometimes you'll even see them where they tell you to grate the onion, you know? So you get the flavor, but you don't get the pieces of-- The onion at all, right. You don't get it really concentrated. All right. Our chicken is tore up. So we're going to take our lid off our pot and I'm actually going to-- because I'm using the 12 quart bowl, it almost fills up the diameter of the soup of our pot. So I just put the nose in down, Cheryl. Mm-hmm. Ball's wings kind of pretty much held everything in place and then I just kind of tipped the bowl over and all the chicken fell out. All right. And gently, because you don't want this. Because of it being the same diameter as the pot almost, it's also a shield for you. For the-- for any broth that might splash up. Mm-hmm. Okay. The Cheryl is right. Put it in gently because you don't want to create a splash because that splash is hot and it'll burn you. [laughter] It will burn you. Okay. Everything's up to a boil. So now the fun part. We're just going to put our dumplings in and we're going to do the same thing. I'm just-- I'm holding the-- I tore about half of the dumpling mix off and I'm just going to take them and simply start tearing off pieces that are about, oh, maybe marble size. Maybe a little-- just a little bit bigger than marble size. Mm-hmm. And we're just going to start popping them in, just kind of letting them-- just spooning them into our broth. So look, while I'm doing that, that's going to take a little bit for me. And again, we're just pulling them off and-- I'm just pulling them off in pieces. I'm not rolling them up into real little perfect balls. I want them to be about the size of a marble, maybe a little bit bigger. Maybe the diameter of a dime. Okay about that size. You don't want to make them too big because they will, with that baking powder in them, they will poof pop up a little bit when they-- when they boil up. So it just keeps stirring them in, tearing off pieces and putting them in. Let me stir up here a little bit. I stir very often while I'm putting the dumplings in. And as I put the dumplings in, I try to put them in in different parts, you know, stay started at 12 o'clock, then one o'clock, two, three, four, five, you know, work your way around the pot, putting the dumplings in. So you're not just dumping them all in one area, they don't all cook together. And then after you go around a couple of times, go ahead and stir them up a little bit. You know, still use that same guide to kind of drop them in, but that way you'll kind of keep them from, you know, coming out on top of each other. And you're all stuck together, which would be my luck. And taste your broth as everything's kind of simmering. We're going to bring these up to a boil. And then we're going to cut them down and just let them simmer for about 15 minutes to 20 minutes and they will be ready to go. Chicken and dumplings right here on Cooking in the Dark will be right back. Now with more of the show, here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell. Welcome back to more Cooking in the Dark. Woohoo. We're about ready to be eating in the dark, man. Really? The thing's just simmering away. I've got the lid on. We're on a low simmer. Hold on. Hold on. I'm getting my bowl. Okay. I'm ready. I know. Good. Good. I got my wine. You're good to go. You know me. Wine with everything. And I've got my bowl. Yeah. And we've got some, we've got some French bread over there. Yeah. Waiting to be torn apart to go with this so we're good to go. All right. What we made today all was chicken dumplings. Very, very streamlined, very easy, very, it's chicken dumplings all day old. You know like I said before, you know, the broth is what my grandma always taught me was one of the most important things. You got to get that broth right. And I'm still going to be tasting the broth here in a little bit just to get it to my taste. I want it just a little bit spicy with the white pepper so we might have to add a little bit more of that. The salt, we might have to add a little bit more there. But I mean, you do that to your taste. If you want to put black pepper in it, do that. I like white pepper because it doesn't contaminate it. It keeps it, you know, it's kind of the hidden heat factor. But you don't want it real hot. I just want it just with a little, just a little after a little, yeah, just a little bit. Yeah. But somebody after they eat it, wow, what was that? It'll make them take another bite, guarantee it. But for that we used about two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. We had one can of cream of chicken soup to a 24 ounce box of chicken broth, five cups of water, about a tablespoon of salt and a teaspoon and a half of white pepper, half of an onion diced up. And we also added about a cup of baby carrots just for color and a little texture difference, you know? It's kind of cool. You want to start off by the breast, you can throw them frozen into the pot that you're going to use. I added about two cups of water, put that on a high and just let it kind of simmer away. Let it boil away. The chicken that's in down in the water, you don't put so much water in it that it covers all the chicken. So it only covers about half of the thickness of the chicken in the bottom. But the chicken that's laying at the bottom of the pot, the fillets of meat there will get hot in that water and kind of tend to thaw. The ones on top are going to start cooking and thawing from the steam. After about three or four minutes of them boiling there, you take your tongs, reach in and flip them over. So that the ones on top then are on the bottom, the ones on the bottom are on the top and in no time at all they'll be done. You know, then pull them out, let them cool, I threw these in the fridge so I could handle them. While they're going in, it's about half a cup of diced onions into the water. Then we also added our carrots, I added the soup, I added the broth, added the salt, added the white pepper, then I added the five cups of water, brought that up, then we shredded our chicken, tossed that in and then we made the dumplings. And the dumplings were what Cheryl, one cup of flour. Yes, so the dumplings, we need one cup of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, a half a teaspoon of salt, half a cup of milk and then two tablespoons of salad oil, which we know can be vegetable or olive. Yeah, and that's it. Place those up and again, play with the consistency like we did with those. You want them to be to where they basically don't stick to your hands, but you don't want them real flowery either. So I just kept, you know, I would stick my hand in and kind of roll it in my hand and kind of stick my fingers in and if I could pull my fingers out of it cleanly, I knew we were right where we needed to be. If not, I added about a teaspoon of flour or a tablespoon, I'm sorry, about a tablespoon or two of flour at a time. And you can tell, I mean, if they go in and they're super sticky, I mean, if stuff, you know, then you just, I mean, just keep adding a little bit of flour. Don't add a whole bunch. Just add it until you stick your fingers into the dough and pull it out and they're clean. Then just pull it off in about, you know, dime size pieces, if you will, about the diameter of a dime or so and, you know, they don't have to be perfect, jump them in there. Like we talked about, put them in around the clock, twelve, one, two, go around a couple of times, stir them up, twelve, one, two, keep going all the way around until you get done with the dough and bring all that up to a boil. Once it hits a boil, let it boil for just a couple minutes and then put it on a simmer and let it go for about twelve to fifteen minutes. And you should be good to go. All right. That was chicken and dumplings right here, a nice winter food to get rid of this old man winter, you know? It's tine. All right, Cheryl, I will see you next week and man, it won't be too long. And Dr. Seuss will be in the house, I'm fired up, I'm excited, I'm excited. All right. For Cooking in the Dark, y'all, I'm Dale Campbell, she's Cheryl Cummings. Yeah!