Comments on: Little White Lab Rat Is Your Sweet Little Honey Dumpling

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:43:33 +0000

It doesn’t say the size of the biscuit recipe. The one I use has 4 cups of flour and fills the 9×13 and then some, but I was just guessing. I rolled and cut the dough 1/2 inch thick.

So, I’ll make a smaller batch of biscuit dough, roll them into raquet balls and boil/steam them in my 5-quart pot.

And, I’ll try the honey dumplings too.

This seems to me an invention of some pioneer woman in the middle of winter, when she wants to make a special dessert but doesn’t have any fruit to make a pie or apple dumpling or anything. If tart apples and tart cherries go in dessert, then tart vinegar should work too. Genius.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:29:58 +0000

That’s an interesting combination of butter and vinegar — I can’t image its flavor and am going to have to try this!

Yes, put the sauce in a cooking pot and bring it to a boil before you put the dumplings in.

This is more than twice the amount of liquid in the honey dumpling recipe. In my three-quart pot, the liquid was only about a half inch deep. The four dumplings made with the 1 cup of flour virtually filled the pot — not packed tight, but there was certainly no room for one more dumpling. They were maybe twice the size of a golf ball raw, and much expanded when cooked.

I don’t know about Amy’s German dumplings or other varieties, but the kinds I’ve made only work well if they’re a single layer deep, leaving room to expand as the baking powder works. Since your biscuit recipe isn’t included, I can’t guess how much you make at a time. I wouldn’t have wanted my dumplings to be any bigger than the four I got from the one-cup-of-flour recipe — is your recipe comparable?

If you make a larger biscuit recipe, you could probably steam them in a stewpot or some similar larger pot than I used — the liquid wouldn’t be as deep (but my half-inch of liquid worked fine, and the fact that your aunt uses a dripper — what, 9×13? — suggests that the liquid doesn’t need to be very deep in your recipe, either), and you could put more biscuits in the larger pan and still have them only one layer deep.

I’m going to try your recipe, maybe tonight but definitely this week.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:51:20 +0000

This is our family recipe:

Vinegar Dumplings

Make light baking powder biscuits, then bake in sauce of:

2 c. water
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. vinegar

Put in a dripper; sprinkle 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon over biscuits and 1 tablespoon butter (not melted) over each biscuit.

Dip for dumplings:

1/2 c. sugar
1 c. water
1 T. butter
2 T. vinegar

Caramelize sugar; pour in water and vinegar. Add butter; thicken with 1 tablespoon flour or corn starch. Pour over hot dumplings and serve.

I had to call my aunt to ask what a dripper was. She bakes them instead of steams them, but they do get gooey sticky on the bottom and crusty on top.

I don’t use 1 T. butter on each one, but maybe I make too many small ones and I should make four bigger ones.

I had to experiment a lot to make sense of this recipe. Now I want to steam it. Do I just put it in a pot with the boiling sauce on the stove top? How big do I make them? I’d love tips.

These are really good. I use apple cider vinegar, and some people swear I put apples in it.

By: charlene

charlene — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:02:18 +0000

My mother, who tended toward standard meat and potatoes and lots of vegetables fare that everyone loved, once made the shrimp in jello concoction. I don’t know where she found the recipe. It tarnished her reputation for some time, but didn’t discourage anyone from coming to dinner.

Thanks for the tip about cooking dumplings with the lid on. “Doughy globs” or “soup thickener” exactly describe my experience with chicken and dumplings.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:20:21 +0000

In her defense, I do not recall my mother ever using dehydrated chicken noodle soup as an MSG substitute. Her MSG substitute of choice was dehydrated onion soup, which seems vaguely more sophisticated. And, while our Jello had various fruit and, occasionally, cottage cheese or grated carrot embedded in it, my mother never embedded meat, poultry, or seafood in Jello. Seafood would have been outside our budget anyway.

I feel a James Lileks link coming on. Gallery of Regrettable Food, anyone?

It took me a long time to ever learn to like pizza, because my earliest experience of it was Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. That should be ample explanation.

My father was quite fond of oyster stew. Not knowing better, and believing anything my dad liked must be good, I acquired the taste as well. Best prepared with milk, a squirt of Worcestershire sauce, and a dash of red pepper. Yes, we had access to Worcestershire sauce, even if we hadn’t a clue how to pronounce it.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:42:06 +0000

If the recipe calls it dumpling, it almost certainly was intended to be boiled or steamed instead of baked — baking probably made it turn out like biscuits, no? which were probably good anyway.

Amy’s the queen of historical recipes. I’ll bet nobody else has tried the orange gelatin baskets, right?

And Vader, you’re just begging for it: Your mama wears army boots.

By: Carol

Carol — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:32:34 +0000

I’ll have to try this one. I have a 4-generation-ago dumpling recipe that assumes I know a lot of things. This filled in some details for me. I’ve been baking it all in a cake pan. I’ll try steaming them like this now. I’ll bet this is the way it was meant to be done.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:41:37 +0000

My mother was rather fond of cream of mushroom soup over toast for breakfast.

We were not taught the indelicate military name for this concoction, but the acronym was SOS.

By: Amy T

Amy T — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:40:12 +0000

Cool! Another historical recipe! I'll have to try it, maybe for Family Home Evening tonight. My mother didn't make dumplings often, but when she did, she was always adamant about leaving the lid on the pot. Due to that, it was a bit of a surprise to find that German dumplings (called Knödel where I served my mission, and called other things elsewhere in Germany) are cooked in boiling water without the lid on. So, that's how I currently make dumplings, when I make dumplings, but I'll make these honey dumplings with the pot securely covered. : )