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This recipe was featured in the 2014 edition of Arkansauce: The Journal of Arkansas Foodways.

 

Both of my grandmothers were wonderful cooks from whom I inherited my love of cooking I’m sure. They each had their specialities which they shared to tables full of folks on a daily basis.  This recipe for my Mamaw’s Chicken and Dumplings was supposedly a family secret – at least a couple of my aunts thought so.  Needless to say, they were horrified when they learned that I had been cooking and sharing the recipe since I was twelve!
 
If you were my Mamaw you would start your Sunday morning very early by going to the chicken coop and selecting an old hen that was no longer laying eggs.  You had to earn your keep in Mamaw’s chicken coop or you were headed to the pot.  After wringing its neck, plucking the feathers, singeing off the remaining tiny feathers (what a smell), yanking out the innards, and cutting it into pieces, the old hen went in the big dumpling pot where it would eventually wind up on the Sunday table as chicken and dumplings.  If you could find a chair around that dining table, you were more than welcome to eat your fill.  Funny thing, that chicken and dumpling pot always seemed to hold just enough to feed the crowd that gathered.
 
Well, I don’t have a chicken coop unfortunately.  Even if I did, I’m not so sure that I would be out there wringing a chicken’s neck to make this dish.  I think I will just continue to rely on the grocery for that, thank you ma’m.
 
These are old-fashioned dumplings.  No puffy ones to be found here.  And they could not be easier to make.
 
 
 After traveling to Boxley Valley to view the rutting elk and remaining trumpeter swans on a very unseasonably cold Saturday in NWA, this was a very welcomed dinner indeed. Comfort food at its best.
 
Elk herd 1

Dear Santa,
Just a reminder…you know that new lens I’ve been hinting for……I’ve been a very good girlSmile.