The tandem post will be up later this week. To tide you over ’til then, I’m posting the recipe for Chicken Dumpling Casserole, which was submitted by reader Elaine. She said that if her son had his way, she’d make this three times a week, and he’d have the leftovers the other four days. Nance wasn’t up for giving this one a try, so I went it alone!

The original recipe came from The Shady Porch; adapted recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

The ingredients:

The recipe calls for 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, boiled and shredded. I opted, instead, to boil a whole (small) chicken, then debone it and shred it. I think I ended up with about the right amount of chicken. Other ingredients are chicken stock (from boiling the chicken – if you use canned chicken or a rotisserie chicken, you can use canned broth instead), a stick of butter, Bisquick (or self-rising flour), 2% milk (I suspect that skim milk would have worked okay, too), cream of chicken soup (the original recipe highly recommends the herbed cream of chicken soup; I only had the regular kind on hand), instant bouillon (or cubes), sage, salt, and pepper.

In a 9×13 casserole dish, melt 1 stick of butter. I did this by throwing the butter in the baking dish, and sticking it in the preheating oven ’til the butter was melted.

Spread your shredded chicken over the butter. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and sage over this layer.

Mix your Bisquick (or self-rising flour) and milk together in a small bowl, and slowly pour over the chicken.

In a medium bowl, whisk together chicken stock (strain it first, if you need to), chicken granules/bouillon, and soup. Once blended, slowly pour it over the Bisquick layer.

DO NOT STIR THIS TOGETHER, MUCH AS YOU MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO.

Bake ’til the top is golden brown, 50 – 60 minutes.

The verdict? Man, this stuff is GOOD. I liked it a lot, and Fred liked it even more. The sauce reminded me very very much of the sauce in a frozen chicken pot pie, so I initially told Fred that next time, I should add a layer of vegetables. But to be honest, we both liked this so much as is, that I fear adding a layer of veggies wouldn’t be as good.

This is absolutely going into regular rotation. The only change I might (I say MIGHT) try next time would be to maybe take the butter down to 1/2 stick instead of a whole stick.

Thanks for the submission, Elaine!