Chicken Soup with Potato Dumplings

I hope you’ve got your leftover chicken, mashed potatoes, and potato water, because it’s SOUP TIME. Chicken Soup is a farm family staple because it’s hearty, cheap, and fills everyone up. Several of you requested this recipe, so I’m excited to share it with you.

A note from Helen on soup

Soup is my most favorite thing to make. It’s not hard once you get the hang of it (except for all the slicing and dicing), and I love eating it. A pot of soup can feed a lot of people, and it freezes well too. 

 When I make soup, I don’t follow any recipes or measure. Soup making is kind of a taste-and-adjust type of cooking for me. We’ve spent some time guessing at spice measurements and included hints at getting that flavor right.

The important thing is to not be intimidated. Soup making is something you learn by doing. 

 Another good thing about not following a recipe exactly is that you can make the soup taste how you like it. For example, I like my broth more thin, but Anna makes her broths more creamy.

One secret to a good tasting soup is to make a large pot of it, at least 5 quarts or more! There are more vegetables to add flavor in a large pot, etc, and it’s easier to season just right. You can always freeze the leftovers. 

how to Make broth

A good soup broth sounds intimidating, but it’s really simple. We do a combination of making our own broth and then using a soup base to punch up the flavor.

 If you have left over chicken or turkey with meat still attached to the bones or carcass, you can boil the bones to get the meat off and make a nice broth. To do this, put the leftover meat and bones in a pot of boiling water so that the bones and meat are submerged. Boil for 20 minutes. Take the bones and meat out and strain the broth. The meat should then fall easily off the bones after it cools. Reserve the broth for your soup.

Here is a good resource if you want to get a more in-depth recipe for broth making.

You don’t have to boil bones to make a good soup though. I (Anna) will often just start with water and use a base for flavoring. When I made this soup to take pictures, I used a combination of potato water, water, and soup base.

For the soup base, our favorite brand is called Custom Culinary Master’s Touch Chicken Base. This stuff will make you a hero in the kitchen. It has the richest chicken flavor without being salty, and it doesn’t contain MSG.

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Jump to Recipe

STEPS: EXPLAINED, WITH TIDBITS AND ADVICE

1. In a large pot over high heat, add a total of 12-14 cups of liquid. I had about 8 cups of potato water, so I added 4 more cups of plain water. If you have a broth made, you can use that too. Bring this to a boil.

NOTE: If you are using anything more complicated than straight water, wait to taste your broth until after it’s boiled for at least 3 minutes, just in case it got contaminated with something by accident.

2. Dice 2 cups celery, 1 cup rutabaga, 1 cup carrots, and 1 large onion or about 2 cups. The dice size can be your preference, just try to get everything about the same size.

3. Once your liquid is boiling, add 2 tablespoons chicken base. (If you made your own chicken broth, skip this step unless the broth needs more chicken flavoring. Taste it to see!) Then, add 1 teaspoon garlic powder and ½ teaspoon pepper. Now, taste it. What does it need? Can you taste the pepper? Does it need more chicken flavor? How’s the salt level? If it needs salt, add 1 teaspoon salt. Mix well. Then, taste it again.

It doesn’t (and won’t be) perfect at this stage because you haven’t put the vegetables in yet. They will add flavor. The time the soup cooks also brings out more flavor. What you are going for in this step is making sure all those notes of chicken, garlic, salt, and pepper are present…and it doesn’t just taste like hot water.

If you go overboard on any one spice, add more water, and try again.

4. Once you’re satisfied with how your broth tastes, add the celery, rutabaga, carrots, and onions. Bring to a boil and simmer until the vegetables are soft, about 15-20 minutes depending on the dice size. Check them after 10 minutes by poking a bigger piece of vegetable with a fork.

5. If your chicken isn’t already deboned and shredded or diced, do that now. You will need 2 cups of cooked chicken or turkey.

6. Time to make the dumpling mix.

The recipe in our cookbook for this soup has homemade noodles in it, so I asked my mom why she switched from noodles to potato dumplings the last 5 years or so. Here’s what Helen said:

Years ago, Sylvia Heikkinen, a local neighbor lady, used to make potato dumplings to put in her chicken soup. I tried to make them the way she did, but they didn’t turn out. So for many years, I used noodles instead. 

Then, I found this mashed potato dumpling recipe in a Czech insurance company magazine I get called the Western Fraternal Herald. It worked so good that I started using it all the time. It was nice to do something different than noodles, and the guests really liked the dumplings.

In a medium bowl, mix together 1 cup cold, leftover mashed potatoes, 1 egg, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt (depending on how salty your mashed potatoes are), and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh or dried parsley.

If you don’t have leftover mashed potatoes, you can boil a few potatoes. Just make sure to doctor them up with milk, butter, sour cream, salt, and garlic powder like you would if you were serving them as a side. Otherwise, you are going to miss out on all that flavor!

Once it’s combined, it should resemble a sticky dough.

7. By now, your veggies should be done. Add the chicken to the soup and bring it back up to a boil.

8. Give it a taste. Add more salt, pepper or garlic if the flavor is bland. Add more bouillon if there isn’t enough chicken flavor. If the flavor is overpowering, add water. Once you get your flavor right, add 2 tablespoons chopped fresh or dried parsley. Let the soup simmer for another 10 minutes to blend the flavors. 

NOTE: Add as much parsley as looks good in the pot. The parsley gives a little flavor but is mostly for that nice green pop of color!

9. Once your soup is basically done, the vegetables are cooked, and the flavor is where you want it, it’s time to start adding the dumplings. Make sure you have a nice steady boil going.

NOTE: I’ve never made these dumplings before. Usually, my mom would have been by my side to teach me, but because we are practicing social distancing, all I had were the notes I took over the phone of her explanation. So that means you’re going to see all my mistakes. Hopefully, this is helpful as you may need to make corrections too.

Here’s how easy Helen makes it look: P.S. There’s no sound. She’s just telling someone to cut up the turkey for something else. haha

Scoop up about half a tablespoon of dumpling mixture on a little spoon. This is your test dumpling to make sure the flavor is good and the consistency of the mixture is right. The dumplings will double in size when they cook, so keep that in mind when you scoop. I had trouble making them too big and, also, all the same size.

Then, dip your spoon in the boiling soup. The dumpling will drop off your spoon.

See that floaty white stuff where I dropped the dumpling in the middle, right side of the below picture? My mom warned me that would happen if my dumplings were too wet. That means they are coming apart before cooking, and that’s not good because your whole pot will fill with dumpling “sludge” plus the actual dumplings.

You know your dumpling is done when it rises to the surface. See it there, next to the sludge.

Scoop out your test dumpling and taste it. How is the texture? It should be firm but creamy. Does it need more salt? My dumplings were a bit bland, too soft, and not firm enough to stay together in the soup, as you saw.

I added another 2 tablespoons of flour, a dash of salt, and more parley (because I had extra and wanted more color in the dumplings.) Then I tried another test dumpling. I still got dumpling sludge.

It took me three or four test dumplings to get the right amount of flour in my mixture. Helen said that happened because my mashed potatoes might have been more wet than hers. This is what my dumpling mixture ended up looking like after I got the right amount of flour in there.

10. Once you’ve managed to get a test dumpling that doesn’t leave behind sludge and tastes just right, you can start adding the rest of your dumplings, one after another. Try to keep them the same size.

NOTE: How do you know when you have enough dumplings in your soup? That’s up to you. Here is what mine looked like when I decided I had enough.

I ended up with some dumpling mix left over. Because of this, I thought about trying to reduce the recipe, but it’s hard to do less than one egg. If you have left over dumpling mix, you can form bigger dumplings, boil them in water or any other broth you have handy, and serve them as a side. You might want to make a simple gravy to go with them. Also, don’t try to store the mix in the fridge for later. Mine turned black for unknown reasons. Yuck!

11. Once you’re done adding dumplings, let your soup boil for another 5 minutes. If you used dry parsley, it can get lost while cooking, so add some more at the end before serving if you want more color. Serve with crusty bread! Yum!

How’d you do with your dumpling mix? How about with your broth?