Chicken and Dumplings by trublmkr

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Ingredients

2 Cups flour - plus extra for dusting 1/2 tsp Salt 2 tbsp Butter - diced 1 tbsp Crisco 1/2 water *optional 1 Whole Chicken 1 Cup Chicken Broth 2 Carrots - sliced *optional 2 Celery stalks sliced *optional

Instructions

Regular plain flour ( 2 cups for one recipe ) extra flour for dusting the dough and rolling it out.
Use freezer paper or wax paper if you have it to place your ball of dough on , dust it heavy with flour to coat it all over and roll into a thin layer.about like a pie crust .
Use a large bowl put flour in , add pinch of salt, mix it in, start with 1 tablespoon crisco shortening and 2 tablespoons cold butter cut up. With your hands work these into the flour so it will look like cornmeal, no big lumps. Add ice water just a little bit at a time mixing this with a large spoon until it holds together well but not too mushy or hard to handle. You can take your hands to work this into a soft ball , make sure butter is cold and use really cold iced water, you might use 1/2 cup of water . This isn't exact, just add a little at a time to get the flour mixture to form a soft ball that you can pick up. Not enough water will make it too hard to roll out. It's really not hard, I am pretty sure you will do this right the first time. It is hard to mess this up . place the ball of dough on a heavily floured surface and roll out , take a knife and cut one inch strips . You can let this set until your chicken stock is ready for it. Boil a whole chicken. Take it out, cool a bit and debone. Using the stock you made from the chicken, add chicken broth, salt , pepper to taste. You may want to add chicken broth instead of water to raise your broth level so that you have at least 8-10 cups of liquid in your pot. Keep this broth at a rolling boil. Start by adding your dough strips pinching off 1-2" pieces of the strip and dropping it into the broth . Do not stir, try to keep it boiling too, keep adding until all the dough strips have been added, now give it one stir, turn your heat off, leave pot on the stove burner and place a lid on it. Keep your chicken warm, wait about 30-45 minutes for the dumpling to cook, add chicken to the pot of dumplings stir and get ready to eat.