Chicken and Dumplings: Thank You, Trisha Yearwood

[Bailey Guns]

My wife and I have been married 28 years. She's a Yankee. By the Grace of God, I'm not. My mother and most of my family is from Alabama.

In Alabama, women folk know how to cook Chicken and Dumplings. You put all the chicken and such into a pot and the dumplings are little chunks of dough that cook in the mixture like...noodles, I guess.

Yankees do not know how to cook Chicken and Dumplings. My wife, a great cook, makes Chicken and...biscuits. She puts the dough on top of the liquid mixture and the dough cooks up like a biscuit. It's good...but it's not Chicken and Dumplings.

I've tried to tell her that's not correct for the bulk of the 28 years we've been married. We've had this argument so many times I've lost count. Enter: Trisha Yearwood and her cooking show. My wife is a fan. Or maybe, was a fan.

Tonight Trisha, who is NOT a Yankee as she's from Georgia, which is right next door to Alabama, made Chicken and Dumplings. And guess how she did it? That's right. Throw the dough into the mixture and cook it the correct way.

I was not watching the program so I wasn't aware of this. My wife made the egregious tactical error of telling me about it. It's gonna take a long time for the smug smile to leave my face and, yes, I'm going to remind her about it every chance I get. Or until she gets really pissed.

Thank you, Trisha Yearwood. I am vindicated at last.

[ray1970]

Sounds like your life would have been different if you had married Trisha Yearwood.

[Great-Kazoo]

Sounds like your life would have been different if you had married Trisha Yearwood.

Wrong side of the tracks.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Alton Brown did a show on this around season 2 of Good Eats ("Don't Be Chicken O' Dumplings") and explained the differences between the northern style and southern style as coming from different parts of Europe. Both methods are historically correct.

Transcript of the show is available at http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/seaso...lings_tran.htm

Well, loyal viewers, your faithful host is pretty much doomed. You see, what my mom thinks chicken dumplings should be and what my mother-in-law thinks—knows that they should be— are, ... Well, let's just say that their views are somewhat conflicting.

So, why can't my mother's chicken and dumpling recipe abide that of my mother-in-law, or vice versa? Well, I'll tell you this. It's got nothing to do with chicken. You see, my mother and our family, going back a dozen generations, belong to the school of big, floaty, fluffy dumplings, a.k.a. "swimmers". While my mother-in-law and her kin, going back, I don't know, a thousand years, are of the hard, flat, and slippery dumpling school, a.k.a. "slickers."

Although my mother's family hails from the north Georgia mountains—Cornelia, to be exact—diligent research clearly shows that our style of dumplings hailed not only from north of the Mason-Dixon line, but ultimately eastern, in northern England, Norfolk, to be exact.

Now my mother-in-law's family is from north Carolina—Cornelius, to be exact—which is only 146 nautical miles northeast of Cornelia. Now there, their flat dumplings are more authentically southern and they descend from the hard dumplings of southern England, specifically Sussex. Which, I might add, was invaded in 477 A.D. by Saxons from Germany.

[brutal]

I grew up in Yankee country and I can tell you those Belgian and German woman make a mean chicken and dumplings.

My grandma was the best, Ma ain't bad either.

[CS1983]

Who on earth makes chicken and dumplings by putting biscuits on top of chicken? That's like saying you made chocolate chip pancakes by spreading nutella on pancakes.

[Joe_K]

If one wanted chicken and biscuits, one could visit the fine dining establishment of Popeyes. But putting biscuits on top of chicken and referring to it as chicken and dumplings...heresy of the highest order.

My Grandma was of Dutch, German stock and a Quaker to boot from Ohio, guess how she made chicken and dumplings? That's right. Cooked like noodles WITH the chicken.

RIP Grandma Ruth. And God Bless Trisha Yearwood.


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[Bailey Guns]

Sounds like your life would have been different if you had married Trisha Yearwood.

I'm thinking more along the lines of Terri Clark...even if she is a Canuck.

[rondog]

My mom made it with the big, fluffy floaters on top, and sometimes with thick, fat homemade noodles in the pot too. OMG it was good! I'd KILL to know how to make it, or to be able to make 1/4 of the awesome stuff she used to cook. She was a farm girl from a very large family in Missouri, and she went to some cooking school when she was young.

[MarkCO]

In, not on, for the Dumplings, agree. My wife also makes Chicken and Butterball soup.