chunks of flommus
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it’s a lot of words but its easier to make than you think

Since y’all are bivouacked at home and need stuff to do and food to make/families to feed I am reposting here my family recipe for

the best chicken dumpling soup in the world : THE DEFINITIVE RECIPE
(A recipe by me and my mom and my grandma and my dead great great great grandma)

you’re gonna need:
6 Hours or so, so do it on a Sunday (this no longer matters. What even are days?)
2 Big Ass Pots
A whole chicken, gizzards, innards and all
An assortment of wings and drumsticks. Perhaps a dozen of each
2 bunches carrots
2 bunches celery
2 bunches green onions
Bag of flour
3 Eggs
4 Tbsp Butter
Some salt and pepper and such

to begin:
• Get a big ass pot. Like a giant witches brew type cauldron pot and put it on the stove about ¹⁄₃ full of water and set it to HIGH.

• Rinse off the whole chicken, remove the innards and gizzards from the body cavity. Its all going into that pot. When working with raw chicken make sure to WASH HANDS FREQUENTLY so you don’t died. If you got wings and legs, toss them in too.

• With the chicken in the pot, start chopping veggies. Chop up both bunches of green onions first and toss em in the pot. Take one bunch each of your carrots and celery and chop them into slices about ¹⁄₄ inch thick. When chopped, put these into the pot as well. If the water level is not yet near the top, fill with more water to get it to the ⁴⁄₅ mark. Cover it up and let it boil. Once it starts boiling, let it boil on its own for about a half hour.

• While the pot is boiling, chop up the remaining bunches of carrots and celery, again into ¹⁄₄ inch slices. Set these aside in a bowl in a fridge. These are the veggies that will end up in the final soup. The ones you put in the pot with the chicken will be far too mushy by then.

• After the pot has boiled for a half hour or so, reduce heat to MEDIUM-LOW, keep it covered and let it simmer for 4 hours.

• 4 Hours later your house should smell amazing and checking the pot you should see that you now have broth. It should be a rich yellow color with a noticeable ‘fatty’ness as you skim with a spoon. Add some salt and pepper or (if you want to cheat) chicken bouillon.

• Remove the pot from the stove and using a strainer, pour the broth from one pot into the other so that the strainer catches most of the solid stuff like mushy vegetables and chicken parts. You’re concentrating the broth down to its purest form now.

• Using a big casserole pan, I’ll dump all the solid stuff that was in the broth into it and sift out the chicken meat by hand, tearing it into small chunks where necessary. You’ll want to do this in the sink so that you can run cold water over the chicken as it will be incredibly hot from simmering for 4 hours.

• So now you should have a pot of pure broth and an assload of chicken. Good work. The chicken goes into the broth, the broth goes back onto the stove and now you’re ready to toss in those vegetables you cut earlier and put in the fridge. Set that pot to HIGH and get out a big bowl to make the dumplings in.

• Dumplings are a bit more of a ‘flying blind’ thing, but they are actually rather easy to make. Taking a large mixing bowl, I beat 3 eggs together with 3 tbsp melted butter. Once mixed together I add lukewarm water until the mixture becomes off-white and opaque. I add a half tsp of salt and start pouring in flour. This is where you basically start eyeballing it. You can always add more flour or water to even it out so take your time. What you want to end up with is a batter with a consistency whereof you put some in a tablespoon and turned the tablespoon over, the batter would slowly ‘plop’ off the spoon. Not like a solid, but like a rather thick liquid. And you can test it out as well. By now your pot should be boiling. Drop a spoonful into the soup and wait a few minutes. The batter should sink at first, eventually rising back up to float. When it does, remove it from the broth and try it out. If the dumpling checks out, simply repeat this process over and over making as many dumplings as you like, making sure to ‘drop’ each one in the different spot in the pot to keep them from joining and clumping and making super dumplings.

• Once you’re out of batter and your soup is full of dumplings (as many or as few as you’d like) I will often reduce heat to Low and let all the flavors mingle for an hour or so longer. The dumplings are basically bread, so it’s good to let them absorb the flavors a bit as well.

• Serve with crusty bread.

results:
You should have enough to feed 4 families or yourself for a week or any variation therein.

back to doing the right thing:
SPIDER-MAN: Work from Home.

—jason malmberg

Flommist Jason Malmberg is a simple man who believes in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art sometimes. Copyright © 2020 Jason Malmberg. Pictured up top: Georg Muche, Kitchen from Haus am Horn (the bauhaus kitchen), ¹⁹²³⁄₂₀₁₁, source.