Crock Pot Tex-Mex Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and Dumplings has been on my "to-make" list for awhile.  However, the weather hasn't gotten too bad here, so I kept pushing them off thinking that there would be a good week to make my favorite comfort food.

It was time for the Recipe Swap for Soups and Stews, and I received Chicken and Dumplings from The Cookaholic Wife.  It seemed like it was fate since I had wanted them for so long.  I love regular chicken and dumplings, but since the ingredients in this recipe were similar to a Tex-Mex version that I saw on Pinterest, so I decided to spice it up and try something a little different.  It turns out the day that I decided to make it, we had 80 mph winds and snow on the ground, so the timing was perfect.

Crock Pot Tex-Mex Chicken and Dumplings
adapted from The Cookaholic Wife and Homesick Texan
Ingredients
Stew

2 chicken breasts, shredded 

1 carton chicken broth  

1/2 cup carrots (about 2 small carrots), peeled and shredded

2 stalks celery, diced

1/2 large onion, diced

1/2 can Mexicorn

1 can Rotel

1 jalapeno, seeded and diced

juice from one lime

2 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup of cilantro

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 cup of water

Dumplings

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 heaping tbs. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups fat free half and half 

1 jalapeno, seeded and diced

2 tablespoons of cilantro

Directions

1) Cook chicken breasts on low in broth for 2-4 hours on low.

2) Pull chicken breasts out of crockpot and shred chicken.  

3) Place all other ingredients for the stew portion of the recipe in the crockpot, and then put the chicken back in with the ingredients and mix well.  Cook on high for 2-4 hours.

4) Mix all the ingredients together for the dumplings until the ingredients form a batter.

5) Drop tablespoons of batter into the stew mixture and cook for approximately an hour on high until dumpling dough is cooked.

I started the chicken in the morning before I left for work and threw all the other ingredients into the crock pot when I went home for lunch.  When I got home to make the dumpling batter, the house smelled amazing.

This version has a little heat from the jalapenos and some of the other ingredients, but it is perfectly counterbalanced by the cornmeal dumpling.  I made the dumplings from The Cookaholic Wife recipe, but afterwords thought that they could benefit from a few of the Tex-Mex ingredients too, just so the flavors would be carried all the way through.  This was a fantastic meal that helped us make it through our first true winter week in Wyoming.