Quick and Easy Chicken and Dumplings

My son asked me to make chicken and dumplings tonight. I have never been able to get it right, but I tried something new. Both he and my husband loved it so I'm going to have to put here to remember what I did. 

Ingredients: 
4 chicken  breasts
MirePoix Style Blend onions, carrots and celery (12 oz-frozen)
32 oz chicken broth
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 tsp minced garlic
2 cans buttermilk biscuits


Directions:
I was going to chop my own onions and celery, but then I found the Mirepox blend while looking for a bag of frozen peas and carrots. It is a Thursday night of the week with the  largest full moon in 68 years, and I teach in a middle school so I was thrilled to go with the shortcut. It was the best decision I have made in a long time. If you want to chop your own vegetables, I used half of the bag-- about 6 oz --of finely diced onions, carrots, and celery. Next time I would use the whole bag. Saute the vegetables in a large cooking pot in either a tablespoon of butter or olive oil with a teaspoon of minced garlic  Saute for about three minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add the chicken broth to the pan. I cut the chicken breasts up into quarters to help the chicken cook a little faster and added it to the broth. Boil the chicken over a medium heat until the chicken is cooked through. My chicken was cooked through in about 11 minutes because I had cut it up. 

Remove the cooked chicken from the pan and cool it. Once it is cool, shred the chicken and add back to the pot. Add the cream of chicken and cream of celery soups and bring to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste.  Take one can of biscuits and tear the biscuits into quarters and add them to the soup. Stir to wet the dough. Simmer until the dumplings are cooked through (15 minutes worked perfectly for me). Eat.

Once all of the dumplings were removed, I brought the pot back to a boil and repeated the dumpling process. This helped the dumplings to cook perfectly without getting sticky.  

The recipe received a 9 from the honest and picky husband and a 10 from the always appreciative son. 


​

---