Arkansas · Main
Arkansas Smoked Turkey and Dumplings
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, wood-smoke running underneath, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 600g smoked turkey, shredded
- 55g butter
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 celery ribs, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 55g flour
- 1.5L turkey or chicken stock
- 250ml cream
- 1 tsp thyme
- For the dumplings: 250g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 3 tbsp cold butter, 180ml cold buttermilk
- Salt, pepper, and parsley
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Sweat the onion, celery, and carrot in the butter, then stir in the flour and cook 2 min. 2 min
- Whisk in the stock and simmer 15 min, then add the cream, thyme, and shredded turkey. 15 min
- Cut the cold butter into the flour, baking powder, and salt, then bind with buttermilk to a soft dough.
- Drop spoonfuls of dough onto the simmering stew, cover tightly, and cook 15 min without lifting the lid. 15 min
- Season, scatter with parsley, and serve.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned 198 recipes
- No colour anywhere: tipped under the light the pieces are translucent to pale gold, with no tan edges, no brown tips, and no browned flecks suspended in the fat.
- The pan is quiet: a low steady hiss, not a crackle. A crackle means the moisture has gone and browning has already started.
- The largest piece pressed against the side of the pan collapses without resistance and with no crunch left at its centre.
- The fat is still clear and loose in the pan and the pan floor is clean: nothing caught, nothing browned on to deglaze, because there was never any fond to build.
- It tastes sweet and mild with no raw allium bite at the back of the throat, and none of the roasted sweetness that belongs to the next technique up the heat scale.
Where it goes wrong The heat was too high and nothing covered the pan, so the pieces took colour before they softened; the finished dish carries a roasty sweetness where it wanted a clean one, and the pieces are still firm at the centre under browned edges.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chardonnay (village Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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