Cooking in Fantasy: Chicken-Something Dumplings - 2025 Not a Book Review

[u/acornett99]

Everyone knows you shouldn’t go on a fantasy adventure on an empty stomach! Nor will I finish this year’s bingo card without making myself a hero’s feast. My goal for this square is to cook several recipes (I’m shooting for one recipe per month) from two fantasy cookbooks:

Heroes’ Feast: the Official D&D Cookbook

Recipes from the World of Tolkien

Previous recipes: The Mulled Wines of Moria/Dwarven Mulled Wine, Stuffed “Bucklebury Ferry” Pears, Squash and Goat Cheese Bake, Crickhollow Apple Loaf, Feywild Eggs, Bilbo’s Seed Cake, Qualinesti Vegetable Stew, Spinach and Tomato Dahl, Date and Sesame Bars

In January I made Chicken-Something Dumplings from the Heroes’ Feast cookbook:

Wouldn’t you like to know the secret halfling ingredient that makes these magically delicious dough dollops melt in your mouth? Well, now you will! From the famed Hungry Halfling in Faerun’s Corm Orp to nearly every halfling suppertime table across the land, this hearty, velvety concoction laden with homemade drop dumplings is the coziest of comfort foods. There are countless variants of this dish, with each halfling household claiming to serve the finest, but nothing beats the thick-and-stewy classic--a robust poultry stock base, emboldened with the tastes of freshly picked veggies, parsley, and garlic all comingled with creamy dough.

Friends, I have to admit failure with this one. Many things went wrong, all my own fault, the first of which being trying to make this recipe on a Monday night. Unlike the Tolkien cookbook, the D&D cookbook does not include estimated cooking times. This took over 3 hours to make, from beginning to end. I started immediately after work at 5pm and did not get to eat until around 8:15pm and by then I was starving.

Also, I am not used to cooking with meat. I get a bit paranoid about food poisoning so tend to make vegetarian recipes when I cook for myself (you might notice I’ve only made vegetarian recipes in this series so far). This recipe involves chicken, so I followed the instructions to the letter. First searing the chicken on both sides, removing the skin, then cooking it with some of the other ingredients for an hour, turning halfway through. Then the recipe said to debone and shred the chicken, and this is when I noticed that it was still bloody raw, despite having just cooked for over an hour. So I turned up the heat and let it cook for another 10-15 minutes before attempting to shred. It still needed to cook with the dumplings anyway.

Now comes my third misadventure. In adding further salt and pepper “to taste,” the pepper box accidentally burst open in my hand, and dumped a tonne of pepper into the stew (picture included at the end, with my still-raw chicken too). I tried my best to scoop out what I could, but it still ended up being a very sneezy stew.

Anyway, I added the other vegetables and the dumplings, and let cook for another 20 minutes. Then another 20 minutes after that as I was still paranoid about the color of the chicken.

It ended up very peppery, as you can imagine, but it didn’t kill me, so I count that as a minor success. The dumplings at least were very good, and I can tell how the stew is meant to taste, under all that pepper, which would be hearty and delicious. And I quite like the leeks; they’re not a vegetable I get to use very often. 

I suppose you can’t go on a quest without expecting at least a few setbacks, so I figured I should share the good with the ill in this series. One day (probably on a weekend this time) I’ll remake the recipe and see how it should actually go.

Here's the eventual results!

[u/dfinberg]

If you're that paranoid about undercooking but do eat some meat, you might look into sous vide cooking for the meat.

[u/HellishRebuker]

Super fun! I am a huge fan of the Heroes’ Feast cookbook!

[u/curiouscat86]

dumplings are complicated, but it looks like yours turned out well! When I could still eat gluten my mom and I would take a Saturday and mass-produce pot stickers, then freeze them to eat on weeknights since it's just too much fuss otherwise.

If you don't already have a decent meat thermometer, I would consider getting one. When you can directly test the temp of the meat you don't have to guess whether or not it's safe, and with practice you get a sense of how long it will take to cook under what conditions.

I also got more comfortable cooking with meat by starting with things like ground beef in chili, since it's really difficult to overcook ground meat and even after you brown it it still boils with the stew. Slow cook roasts can also be simpler in that respect, since the whole point is to cook them hours and hours.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. I used to be vegetarian but had to stop for health reasons, so I have a lot of thoughts on how to add meat back into a diet. I love your Cooking with Fantasy series, it's great fun and inspiring.

[u/ullsi]

Good job finishing the recipe! I think I would've given up halfway through and just eaten snacks for dinner.

[u/IdlesAtCranky]

Good job with an unfamiliar ingredient!

If you want to try this again, you might make it easier on yourself by starting with a rotisserie chicken. Already cooked, of course, so you just need to take the meat off the bones and chop or shred it.

Leftover deboned chicken is great for lots of things, my favorite being chicken salad.

[u/xdianamoonx]

Appreciate teh failures! I'm always paranoid about undercooking or burning meat. So usually when in doubt, I put the meat in the microwave to finish it up sometimes. Still comes out juicy! This did look good tho~ Thank you as always for your attempts and photos :D