Chicken Soup with Dumplings

The weather's starting to cool down here in the Bay Area! Time to pull out sweaters, scarves, boots...and what can be better than a nice, warm bowl of chicken soup to warm you up.

Keller's version of a French dumpling and chicken soup was yummy.

To make the soup base, first melt butter in a stockpot with carrots, celery, onion, and leeks.

Season with salt, cover with a parchment paper lid, and cook very slowly until the vegetables are tender.

Once the veggies are cooked, add chicken stock and simmer for half an hour. After cooking, strain the soup and discard the veggies.

After discarding the veggies for the base, simmer the soup again and add roux, which is made with butter and flour, to thicken the soup a little.

Simmer the soup + roux for 30 more minutes.

To make the dumplings, we make pate a choux - a cream puff dough - to use. Combine water, butter, and salt in a saucepan and simmer. Then add the flour all at once and stir until the dough is glossy and smooth. Once the dough is done cooking, move it into a mixer bowl, add dijon mustard (yum), and salt. Mix eggs into the dough and then incorporate chives.

With the dough, you'll make quenelles. A quenelle is a shape that is made using two spoons to scoop and smooth the sides. After forming a dumpling, drop into a pot of simmering water to cook.

Once the dumplings cooled, you can trim uneven edges with scissors to make them look pretty.

I'm a fan of dark meat - so for the chicken, I boiled down chicken thighs took cook and shredded them up.

For the veggies in the soup, we peel the celery stalks, cut them into slices, and cook in pot of boiling salted water until just tender. Once cooked, drain and cool in an ice bath to stop the cooking.

The carrots are quartered into bite-size pieces and put into a saucepan covered with cold water, honey, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, and salt&pepper. All that for carrots? Yes - so worth it. Cook until tender and drain.

Add the dumplings, chicken, carrots, celery, and chives to the soup and heat through. Season with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Then transfer everything into a bowl and enjoy!