I grew up in the north of England, where a good old stew is a firm staple especially in my parents generation. On a walk today I got a waft of someone cooking something which reminded me of my mum’s stew and dumplings from when I was little. She sent me the recipe she had… in her head, and from that I adapted for the ingredients I had at home. The beauty of a stew is just that, you can mix it up depending on what you have, veggies, meat a thick gravy and the addition of fluffy dumplings on top are a winner for cold winter days and take me back home when I really live at the other end of the country.
Ingredients
Stew
6 chicken thighs, skin and bones removed.
2 tbsp of plain flour
2 cloves garlic
cooking oil- rapeseed, sunflower (whatever you use)
2 tbsp thyme – fresh or dried
Salt and Pepper
1 white onion
2 carrots
4 potatos – maris piper or similar (so they don’t just disintegrate)
Chicken Stock (or any other, fresh or in a cube)
2 tbsp tomato puree
Dumplings
250g self raising flour
140g cold butter
150ml (Ish) cold water.
3 tbsp fresh herbs – parsley, chive etc. (whatever you’ve got!)
Method
Chop up your chicken thighs into bite size pieces, add them to a bag or a bowl with the flour and some salt and pepper, jumble it all around until the chicken is coated.
Turn the oven on to about 150 degrees C.
Chop up your veggies into similar sized chunks.
In a thick bottomed pan – medium heat- add 2 tbsp of oil, with the garlic, and thyme. Add your chicken in batches and just seal the outside of the chunks. Take sealed chicken out the pan and keep to one-side.
Next in the same pan (now empty but full of lovely cooking juices and stuff) chuck in your veggies – onion, carrot, potato, with a little more oil and get them cooking down.
Add the chicken back into the veggies and give it a good stir, next add the tomato puree and season with salt and pepper. Finally add the stock – you want to make sure all the veggies and meat are covered. Turn the heat up a little and get it bubbling away
Stick the lid on the pan and get it in the oven for an hour.
When your hour is nearly up you can make your dumplings – in a stand mixer (or a bowl) add your flour, and then with the K beater, or using your fingers, add the cold butter in small chunks a little at a time, rub it together until you’ve got what looks like crumbs. Once its at that stage, add your fresh herbs (Optional) and some salt and pepper.
Next we’re going to add a small amount of cold water at a time until your crumbs turn into a dough. This should only take about 150ml (deffo don’t add all your water at once!)
Roll your dough into ping pong sized balls.
Take your pan of stew out the oven and lift the lid, give it a good stir – don’t forget your oven gloves…!
Carefully place the dumplings around the top of the stew, stick the lid back on and then leave it in the oven for another 20mins. For the final 5 you can add a little cheddar cheese and leave the lid off too if you fancy!
when you take the pan out of the oven now the dumplings will have swelled and will cover the top of your stew… nom nom nom. Serve straight away with some pickled onions, bread and butter for a proper northern tea!
@doodledub_eats 