Chicken Vegetable and Herb Dumpling Soup

                               

    
                              Chicken Vegetable and Herb Dumpling Soup

What's your favourite soup recipe? I've a couple of other chicken soup recipes on the blog but you just can't have enough chicken soup in my eyes. 

Although spring is upon us it's still rather chilly here in England and what could be better to warm us up than a good old bowl of soup.  I've added my favourite herb dumplings making it a complete meal in itself.  This recipe will serve 6 easily making it a really economical and satisfying dish.

Now I make my dumplings with suet but if you'd rather use butter then that's fine... the easiest way is to freeze the butter and then grate it into the flour then quickly mixing it in with the herbs & water.

Here we go then.

For the Soup :-

3 pints of good chicken stock either homemade or store bought
about 1lb cooked chicken cut into smallish pieces ( I stripped mine from a roasted chicken)
3  medium carrots sliced thinly
3 sticks of celery chopped
1 large onion diced
2 leeks thinly sliced
a small head of broccoli cut into small florets
a bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tbsps rapeseed or olive oil (or butter)
salt & pepper to taste.

For the Herb Dumplings :-

3 tbsps of suet or grated  frozen butter * see above
¾ cup of self raising flour
2½ tbsps of fresh green herbs,  I used parsley, thyme and rosemary
1 tsp sea-salt  
few good grinds of the black pepper mill
¾ cup of ice cold water 

 The Soup:-

Sweat all the vegetables except the broccoli in a large saucepan with the oil/ butter on a low heat until almost soft...should take around 15 minutes
Add the stock, bay leaf and thyme
Taste and add any necessary salt & pepper
Simmer for around 5 minutes more then add the broccoli and chicken. When the soup begins to bubble again add the dumplings ( recipe below).  Continue to simmer gently without stirring for around 10 minutes when the dumplings should be cooked and deliciously tender.   

The Dumplings:-

Just mix all the dry ingredients lightly together in a large bowl
Add enough cold water to bring everything together into a soft pliable dough  (don't over wet the dough) 
Form into around 18 small balls.
Add to the hot soup as described above. 

Serve piping hot and I hope you thoroughly enjoy it... let me know how you get on  



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