Buttermilk Biscuits and Chicken & Dumplings | Cooking with Holly

You put a stick of butter in your chicken broth. What? I love you so much.

It's like the best thing I've ever heard.

Hey, everyone. I am here today with a very special guest Chef, Lisa.

Hello, Lisa. Hi.

Thank you for being with me.

Thanks for having me here.

I have never actually cooked biscuits from scratch or made chicken and dumplings. And so today, Lisa is going to teach me how to do both of those things. And maybe Abby is going to to join us at some point. So you've got a new cookbook out?

I do.

It's called the Joy of the Feast, but it's very centered around, like, home cooked Southern cuisine. If you were gonna tell someone the first recipe, you should cook out of this book.

Oh, my gosh.

What would it be?

It's gonna depend. Okay. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say the shrimp and grits because they're like, I have a won awards and stuff. But the cookbook is completely about remembering the joy of feasting together. But just that feeling that you get a love and acceptance and abundance even.

Yeah.

From feasting.

There was one recipe in the book that made me so happy when I saw it. Your pineapple casserole.

Oh, yay.

I am. I. My mom made that when I was a kid. It just surprised me because I don't know anybody that knows about that recipe. And when I tell people about it, they're like, wait, pineapples and cheese. I'm like, I promise you. Trust me. So good. It made me so happy to see that one. So today, the first thing we're gonna make is buttermilk biscuit.

So we take our flour. This is all purpose flour. We're gonna do our baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Just one teaspoon and a little sugar. Two teaspoons sugar. Yeah.

Okay.

The butter just needs to be cold because it's the pockets that are left behind from the melted butter to make a flaky biscuit. So you see how the butter's kind of gotten to it?

Yeah.

We want it to be like walnut sized. So let's make a little. Well, okay.

Abby, you want to come over here and watch? My grandmother, when she would get them all rolled out, the dumplings, we would come and take pieces of them, and she would always slap our hands and tell us to stop eating them.

I just want people to see what it should look like. Okay.

And that way, because this looks really wet.

It does. It looks too wet because we're going to flour our surface. Uh huh. We're gonna knead it and pull in more flour liberally.

I can't see over you.

Can't go wrong. Here we go. We want quite a bit, actually, still. Yeah.

More. Yeah.

I tried to get my grandma to teach me how to make the biscuits, but she didn't have anything measured out. And she was like, well, you'll just know. She's like, no, I won't. I won't know.

I'm just being really gentle with this. I'll know when I feel it. Kind of slow kick back at me.

Side, top, bottom.

Exactly.

Can I try it?

I don't know if you want to get dirty. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Did you say we are very dirty people? She totally said we are a little bit messy.

Get it in there. Okay, you just order. You want to go top, bottom. So we're gonna start rolling. Okay. I kind of start in the middle and go out, come back. We're just gonna line them up.

All right, so you grab them.

Yeah.

These are the pieces I used to eat. Oh, my gosh. You're really missing out.

Let me see what we're doing here.

You need to taste this. Look at Abby.

Look at that.

Okay. It actually is really good.

See? Here you go.

Here. So let's pop those in the oven. Preheated to 400. Get it in.

All right, so, Lisa, the next thing we're gonna make is chicken.

And done.

So what's in here?

All right. I literally put an entire chicken. I put it in. Just cover it with water. Granulated chicken bouillon, three salts of celery, two carrots, one big onion, black pepper.

Black pepper, bay leaves, and it's all chopped up. Just chop them up into with the chicken?

Yeah.

Boil it all.

Yeah.

Abby's gonna peel our chicken here.

Yeah. I also reserved about a cup and a half of this broth.

Okay.

That's the only liquid that we're going to add to that flour to make the dumplings. And this is going to go back into a rolling boil so we can drop our dumplings in.

That's our biscuit timer.

We'll see what they look like. Wow.

Okay.

Five more minutes. We've got the chicken going. We've got the stock going. And now we're gonna make some dumplings. I think I did five hours on the timer. It's at 456, so we know if you said five minutes, it's got one more minute on there.

Oh, I kind of forgot something. Also, put a stick of butter in the chicken.

You put a stick of butter in your chicken broth.

What?

I love you so much.

Okay. Yeah.

It's like the best thing I've ever heard.

So it's a stick of butter in your broth?

In the broth, yeah. So therefore, there is butter in. There's fat in here.

While you make this, I have to ask you. You were on chops?

It's the Black History Month episode. The first time ever that Chopped had an all black cast of chefs and judging panel. Okay. So it was kind of a historic situation.

Okay. Were you intimidated by who the other chefs were?

Not at all.

Okay. Did you know any of them? No. Of them?

No. Not at all. They're super cool people.

Pause for a second. Tell me what you're doing.

Just getting this. Obviously, it's like biscuits, right? Right. You want this to be, like, almost paper thin, to be honest.

You want them thin?

Yeah.

Are our biscuits?

Oh, shoot.

Our biscuits.

Oh, they're fine. Yeah. Ooh. They're actually perfect. Look at the flaky.

So, all right, load up your. Load up your fingers.

Okay.

All right. So when you were on Chopped.

Yeah.

How hard was it?

Hard, like. Okay.

I'm really good at time management, but it's different. It's a different kind of pressure. You have this great thing you want to execute, and you got a lot of pieces and parts going on, and that time's just going down. And it takes longer to plate than you think it's going to take you to plate.

So you put them in, and you don't want them to touch or you don't care.

Drop them in. The rolling boil is what circulates. Once you pull it out and taste it, and you're like, yep, that's it. Then put that chicken in.

All right, I think we're ready.

Let's.

Wow both of these meals. Look, just.

Now, you're not gonna find this anywhere in any restaurant. You gotta make this at home, y'. All. This is where the love is.

All right, which one? What are we gonna taste first?

Okay, hang on. First, I have to ask you something.

Okay.

I don't know if you're gonna tell me, but I figure, like, I'm a kid, so you probably will tell me. Did you win Chop?

I can't tell.

All right, what are we tasting first? Taste the dumplings first.

Amazing.

What do you think, Abs?

I haven't tried it yet, but my little nibba, it's hot. Guys.

Abby, you're killing me here.

Oh, my gosh. It's delicious.

Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Yum.

Perfection.

Perfection. All right, well, guys, I should probably finish not talking my mouth full.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Cooking with Chef Lisa.

Cooking with Holly and Abby and Chef Lisa. If you like this video, make sure you like subscribe. Hit the notifications, Leave us a comment. Let us know if you made Chef Lisa's chicken dumplings or her biscuits. Or make sure you go follow Chef Lisa. Tell them her how they can.

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Chef Lisa Brooks, make sure you follow her. Leave us a comment below. Let us know what you're making for dinner tonight, and we'll see you back here next time. We're gonna have to wash our hands again.