THANKSGIVING

234K views · 4.4K comments | Dumplings | Y'all these dumplings are the best I've ever made. You have got to make them. www.whitelily.com and check them out. These are Hannah's favorite. She... | By Cooking with Brenda Gantt | Morning sweet friends. Let's make some ham dumplings. I usually don't measure but you know what? Because I love y'all. I'm going to measure today. I always make mine in my bowl like this like I do the biscuits but I use different flour. Now, let me get out the flour and show you what to use. Alright, this is what I use y'all and here's the reason. I don't like puffy dumplings. I like my dumplings to be flat. And so I all-purpose flour. It doesn't have any salt in it or anything that makes it rise or anything like that and I use whitelily. I've used it all my life. Granny used it. Big Momma used it. My mama used it and I used it. But anyway, make sure that you get the all purpose, okay? The same one you make most of your cakes with. That's the that's the flour that you want to get. Alright, the other day I cooked the ham. And you saw it. And I I put the ham in a roaster and and so I put water in there with it you know about that deep in there and I cooked two hams. Well here is the broth off of those two hams. Now I did not boil a ham bone this time. Because I was just using a whole ham. The ham bone's still in my refrigerator. But all that stuff. That good stuff that came off that ham. Here it is. Now I saved it. And I poured it in this Joe. That's going to be our broth today. We're going to make the dumplings and drop them in this good ham broth. Now this grease is you know grease comes to the top. All this down here is is juice and ham drippings. So what I'm going to do today is I am going to save this grease because this is really good to cook your scrambled eggs in. It's good to do a lot of stuff in. Just like you saved bacon grease. Well, I I saved ham grease. Instead of buying grease, save the grease that you have, that's going to save a little money. Heck, you could make, you could actually make biscuits out of this grease instead of the other grease and have ham biscuits. Have you ever thought of that? Well, grease is grease y'all. Alright? That's that's it. Alright, so let me show you now. I'm going to move this to the side. We'll use it another day. Alright. Now, I've got me a big boiler out. This is what here's what I've got. Alright, so put your if you don't have this. We're just learning how to make dumplings. If you don't have this, it's okay. You can boil a chicken. You can boil a ham bone. Or whatever. And so pour your drippings in your thing. And look how thick it is. Do you see that? Now I'm going this is strong. So I'm going to add maybe that much water. So let me get that to it. Because you got to have plenty of liquid to cook to fix your dumplings. Okay. Let me get some water to put in it. And we're fixed to turn it on. While we make our dumplings. Alright, here's some water. Alright, it's about this pot is about halfway full, okay? Now, do not add any salt in your ham dumplings and the reason for that, let me turn it on is because ham is very salty already. Alright, so here's how we're going to do the dumplings. Let me get my bowl back. Here's all you do. Take three cups of that whitelily all-purpose flour. Let me let me do this. Okay. And put it in a bowl. This is three cups. I did not sift it. It works better when it does but you don't have to do it. Alright? And you're supposed to take a half a cup of grease. I never measure that either. I just stick my hand in the grease and pull out some. It's what I do. And I pull out usually about that much. Let's see how close I am. That's all I got left. See? You don't have to measure. That little bit of much more or that much less doesn't make any difference. Put around a half a cup. Alright? Put it in. I'm going to make a hole right there to put it in. See that hole I'm whoop. See that hole I'm making? I'm going to put it in there. You've got to use your hands for this y'all. One hand anyway. Alright so we got three cups all purpose flour. We've got a half a cup of grease and here is a cup of whole buttermilk. Poured in that whole. Move everything out of your way. I've been out and now we're going to mix all this together with one hand, this hand. Uh you're going to squish up that grease in there. I'm not even putting the flour in it yet. I'm just squishing the grease up in it. Didn't send that hole in the middle. See there? I've been outside today. I'm making me a new bush flower slash flowerbed area in my backyard. Because some of y'all have given me some gorgeous plants to plant outside. You've given me some bushes and some bulbs and somebody the other day sent me some of that homestead verbena that I've been trying to root of mine because I only got just a little bit left. And so I'm I've got that. And I'm all excited about that. And I planted it this morning. I also had some and I put it in the bottom of my hole and worked it around with the dirt so that it would be rich. I also tried this morning to root me. Now you're supposed to work your dumplings a long time. They need to be stiff, okay? Uh my mother had a rose that was a very light pink. And it it I guess it was more of a running rose. Wasn't a climber but it puts out long branches and stuff like that. Alright, here's what we're getting right now. See that dough? I'm working that flower in it real good. Trying to get all of it off the sides and everything. Anyway, so I cut off a bunch of the stems about eight inches long for each stem and I left just a few leaves at the top. And I dug me a hole out there and worked the dirt up real good. And I planted in that hole. I planted those roses that don't have a single root on them. I planted them and then I or stuck them down in that dirt. Watered them in real good and I then I got some branches off of another bush tree or whatever just to stick around it so that hot sun wouldn't hit on it because where I planted it is going to be in the full sun. So I just put stuck some branches down in there that had a lot of leaves and it was kind of big to kind of shade it for a few days. Maybe a week. I may have to change them when the but the the limbs to keep it done. Alright y'all now listen. Here's our dough. And you could tell it's too too sticky. You know what when you're cook when you're making dumplings it has to be not sticky and it has to be worked a long time. So this is when you make a call on how much extra flour to put in it. And you're not going to mess up y'all. You are not going to mess up. I promise you. I promise you that. You're going to be able to do it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just get me a handful of the plain flour like this. Get me a handful. I'm going to sprinkle it on my surface right here. And put the rest of it right over here out of the way. I'm going to get my dough out of the bowl. And put it in the center of that pile of flour like that. Get all of it out. Like that. Okay? Sit this out of the way. Now I'm going to take both hands. I'm going to flour them good. And I'm going to turn you down so you can really see what I'm doing. That's the main part so you can learn to make a dumpling. Alright so I've got my dough here. Let's go ahead and get you even closer. There you go. I'm going to work this dough. I am working it. Like that. Okay? I want to stiff. Put you some muscle in there. And I want it flowery. So because when I roll it out I do not want it sticking to my chopping block. You see how it's getting stiff? It is it's getting together. You see that? These are going to be some delicious ham dumplings. I am telling you. Alright, see how it's sticking a little bit? Just don't let it do that. Put just some more flour on it. Remember, you can't get too much flour. You just want to work in though a little at a time. Push it and really work it good. Like that. You can do this. I promise you, you can do this. Now, let me tell you this. While I'm doing this, you know all I'm going to be doing is working. I will tell you something. In these when we say the word cobbler, if we say the word cobbler, that means it has dumplings in it and a lot of juice. Alright so when peaches come in what what people do is they do this. They put the peaches in a boiler and cover real good with water. A good bit of water. And they cook them till they're tender. If they were using canned peaches. They just pour the peaches and the juice and everything in some water. Wouldn't have to cook them long. Okay? Anyway then they cook them till they're tender. Then they add a stick of mud and you know a cup of sugar or cup and a half of sugar you know you taste the broth and see does it need more sugar or not does it need more butter or not if it does put it in there darling put it in there anyway so now you got this big mower of peaches and sugar and butter and water and that's delicious then what we do in the south is we make our dumplings and we drop them in there and we save half of the dumplings dough like that to make a crust to go on the top which we cover with butter a little bit then sprinkle sugar all over it so be real crunchy but that's what we do and if we're you're making a blackberry cobbler you do the same thing you put your juice in the boiler you cook them a while or they're kind of tender or you know then you add a stick of butter and some sugar, cup, cup and a half. It may take two cups of blackberries. You know they're sour. Or dew berries. Or I think one time I told you how to make a if I'm not mistaken and I told you how to do this. To make a sweet potato cobbler. Uh we do that too. So what I'm telling you is this. You can do it. If you learn to make dumplings, just think of all the things you can make. You can make a chicken pot pie. You can make a ham pot pie. You can make ham dumplings. You can make chicken dumplings. You can make sweet potato cobbler and apple cobbler and blueberry cobbler and blackberry cobbler. I mean y'all this is a you gotta learn to do this. Alright so I think it's ready. Look. It looks pretty stiff. It's not sticking to this. It's not sticking to my surface so it must be ready. So what I'm going to do is divide this in half and or maybe thirds. And the reason I'm going to do that is because my chopping block is not as big as it needs to be. When I roll this out to drop in my juice over here I just have room to roll out the whole thing because it takes so long. So I'm going to just sit this one aside and I'm going to roll out this one to go in that juice. Then I'll roll out the other one. So I'm going to here's how I'm going to roll it out. I'm going to sprinkle this over my surface. Y'all might be using the countertop and that's fine. And get your rolling pan. Here's mine. I'm going to put a little flour on it so it won't stick to whatever I'm doing and I'm going to start rolling. Now when you roll this out you want it as thin as possible. Thin as possible. Okay? Now, let's pick it up and make sure that it's not sticking and it is not. See how easy that was? And just drop it in your juice darling. In your chicken juice or your ham juice and it or you or your peach juice. And it will be delicious. Now if I were doing if I were doing in chicken and dumplings today. I would put salt and pepper in my broth. Because chicken when you boil it unless you put already put some unless you've already put some salt in it. It's not so salty. But these hams that I buy, oh Lord, they're salty. Alright, see that how thin I'm getting it. You want it paper thin, okay? Let me turn this up because we fixed to we fixed to boil this stuff. I like I like black pepper in mine. I will say that. Alright. Make sure bear down on it now and make sure that you got it thin. Thin thin. What done knock off? My spatula. And I got to have that. I'll have to wipe it off. Uh There you go. That looks great. Uh here's what we're going to do now. We're going to go ahead and cut this up and it's so that and you want your juice to be at a rolling boil, a rolling boil. So, here's what I do. I take my spatula and I cut little strips like this Easy peasy. Easy peasy. Then I'm going to go the opposite way. Like that. You know two or three inches something like that. Doesn't really matter. I can tell you your family's going to eat it up either way you fix it. Alright. Let's get this to a rolling bowl and it looks like it's just about there. Um my ham bowl though is in the refrigerator. Hannah came over yesterday and we shared some ham and we ate some of that pimento cheese that I fixed and some crackers. We drank some water. Cuz I'd been outside working all day. I didn't have time to make tea or anything. I just I just didn't do it. I wish I had it but I didn't. And I ate some leftover corn dip. She didn't eat any yesterday. But I did. You way. So let's come over here and I'mma let you watch something right here. Let me move this back a little so we can see. We're almost. Uh oh. Let me get that fixed. My light went out. Wait just a second. While y'all are watching that, I will try to hook our light back up. I pulled accidentally pulled it out. Alright, it's just about there. You see how it's almost boiling? Alright, I'm going to get it fixed so that you can actually look down in it. I'm going to sit you up on two cans I think today. Whoo. You're high up. Hope you don't fall. We don't want to break a hip, do we? One of my followers wrote in yesterday said she was sitting in a hospital. Bless her heart. We don't like to be sitting in a hospital, do we? You can't get this big light on up here. There. Is that that's good? That's better, ain't it? Yeah. Anyway, okay. Let me set a plate on it for just one second. That always helps me to hurry up and boil. Y'all do that sometimes. I could get the top that goes on it. Okay. Alright, it's it's it's there. It's rolling boiling. Y'all see that in there now? It's a rolling boiling. Alright, so what I do, I've already cut up my dumplings. I fixed to drop a bin and here's how I do it. I pick up several at a time like this and I hold it on there and and that's how I do it. Alright, so let me do the rest of em. You see that? Here's our dumplings. It's going to be good. I'm excited. Okay, if y'all want to see me how I'm doing this, I'll show you that. All I'm doing is going up under it like this and then tape it over here and see it's not sticking to my surface. That's why it's important. You certainly don't want to start your dumplings and then all of em happen to be sticking to this. You will have a mess. You will have a mess. Alright. Now, then, what I'm going to do, I'm going to roll out this other take a dumplings though. This one and I'll be right back. Let me get it rolled out. Okay, I just about got it rolled out now. Y'all can see. I think you can. Oh lordy. Don't we have a time moving each other around. Anyway, roll it out real thin, as thin as you can. Like I say, I need a just a little bit bigger chopping block so I can roll out all of it at one time. I don't have to do this little thing but I have it. I did not have it. There we go. That looks pretty thin. Alright, let's cut it. Where's my cutter? Here we go. Alright. Now, let's go the other way. And let's drop em in. And this is all it is to it now you know good and day going well you can do this you know you can I mean it's not like it's gotta be perfect see how they're boiling real hard I'm dropping them in that's why you have to add more water you have got to have enough water in there so that everything can boil a while. It probably boil about 10 or 15 minutes. They're so thin that you're, I just dropped one on the floor. They're so thin that they just don't take long. So, if you've got broth in the refrigerator and your family comes in and they say, we're starving. Well, get out that jar of broth. Make a quick dumplings and put it on the table. Now, you don't want to stir a whole bunch and you want to leave it on high. Oh. You want to leave it on high, okay? And let we're going to let it cook for about 15 minutes. And I am going to add pepper. In mine. I do like pepper but for goodness sake don't don't add any don't add any salt because you'll be you'll regret that. You'll regret it. Alright. So I'll be back in a little bit and you can eat some dumplings with me. Would you like that? I can't wait. So just hang there tight. Let me in about 15 minutes. I'll be back. Hey y'all. They've been cooking about 10 or 12 minutes and I think that they're ready. I dropped my label down there in it. Listen, you've got to keep your you've got to keep your broth on fairly high because the dumplings will fall to go to the bottom and start sticking. So, you can check it every now and then to come. Don't just stir and stir because you don't want to tear em up but you can keep it, you know, don't put it on real low to cook. Uh you want to see me get them out. Well, you don't need to. I, you can see, I'm going to bring it over there to you. I'm going to get me a thing of dumplings and I'm going to get juice. Now and I think I'm going to have to have a spoon and a fork to eat it. And it is hot. As my mama says as a blue blaze in the sunshine. And that's a hot. It's hot as a blue blaze of sunshine. Alright here's your dumplings. Here are your dumplings. They have a broth and they've got dumplings. Now if you were cooking a ham. And let's say that you wanted ham in yours. Alright here's how you do it. Cut most of the meat off of that hambone. Set it aside. Boil the hambone and the skin and the gristle and the whatever, that big hambone. Boil it for a long time slowly so that you get all this good broth. Take the hambone out. Do your dumplings just like I showed you and put them in your broth. Take the ham that you set aside. Not the ham bone because that meat on there will be dried out because you boil it so long. Take that other ham that you set aside. Cut it in little cubes and throw it in at the very last. That's how you do it. Okay. And if you were making peach cobbler, you want this much juice in it. Or blackberry cobbler. In the south, we like the juice. We don't want something that's solid. Mm mm. That y'all it is so good. Glory. There's your dumplings. See how thin it is. Y'all see how thin? See if I can do that. Mm mm. They are fine. While y'all were gone I mean sitting around and I told ya I'd be back in 10 minutes. I washed my dishes. I washed a measuring cup. I washed for the flour, a measuring cup for the butter melt and that little measure for the grease. And I washed the bowl. But if I were doing it my way I wouldn't have all that mess. And here's here's what I'm going to show you. I only measured for you. I only measured for you. In my first cookbook, folks, if you have that, you're going to say, well, Brenda didn't make em today like she made the cookbook. That's right. I made it in a clean bowl so that you would know how to not be afraid or to do it but here's what you do. I take a big bowl like that that's full of of whitelily all-purpose flour. I have a bowl in there that's that's for that. I just keep it with a claw. I make me a hole in that bowl. Of all that flour. See how much flour's in it right there. Then I work it in that. I just put me some buttermilk in. Just whatever I think. And I kind of guesstimate about a cup. I mean can't you? You can guesstimate. Put your little grease in there. You'll get it pretty close. It don't have to be perfect. See? And then just work it and work it until it's stiff. Flower your surface and do it just like I showed you. And if you do that then you're not going to have to wash the bowl or the measuring cup or the the all that stuff over there like I just did for you. You you won't have to do it. You just going to cover the bowl with a cloth and put it back in the cabinet. Y'all want to bite. Look at that. Look at that. Now look. Is that not beautiful? I can tell you right now. This ain't going to be enough for me. I'mma have to go back and get another bowl. And you want plenty of juice. I'm going to have to carry Hannah some of these. Cuz it's her favorite. She likes them better than chicken dumplings. And I do too. That ham broth is fine. Don't ever throw away bones. You boil those things. Whether they're chicken bones, ham bones, beef bones, whatever. Get that broth. The times are hard. You're going to have to stop quit throwing stuff away. Make your coffee at home. Don't pay $6 or $8 or whatever you're paying. To go out and get you some coffee, make you some at home. If you like that that coffee that they make, go get a bag of it. Make your own. It's okay to go out once in a while but some of y'all are going every day. Mm mm. Those are fine. They are fine. You can do this darling. Get you some whitelily flour, little grease, and a little buttermilk. If you cannot find the whole buttermilk, use the kind they have like oh I don't know. Sometimes they'll have a skimmed buttermilk or something. It's not whole buttermilk and that's okay. It's still got that flavor. And you're and I know what y'all are asking me right now. You're saying in your phone I can hear you all the way over here in Andalusia Alabama. I could hear you saying well can we use sweet milk? Well yes you can. Can we use water instead of sweet milk or buttermilk? Yes you can. Well they taste as good. Not quite. But that ham broth is so strong that maybe it'll cover that you don't have the other. And maybe it'll make it good. I made dumplings with water before. And they turned out real good. So if you can't have dairy you don't have to put dairy in it. You could do it without that. But you have to use flour. You have to do that. You got to have some flour. You sure do. Okay y'all. Have a great day. Make some dumplings. I will put you a link in there for White Lily in case you don't they don't sell it in your town. They do they do ship it you know. Alright. I love y'all. Bye bye. Oh and by the way I hope you've ordered your cookbook. You pre-ordered it because I I I mean you gotta pre-order to get it. It's not going to be in stores. It's not going to be in Amazon. This is my third cookbook. And so you need to get yours. Love y'all. Bye bye.

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