These savoury dumplings for stews, are so easy to make especially now Atora vegan suet is easily available everywhere. Just weigh the ingredients, wholemeal flour vegan suet etc and blitz it in the blender. Add enough water or plant milk to form a dough and that’s it – job done.
The main thing is the spices and other additions to give them that yummy taste. Also, when you make a stew you need enough liquid for the dumplings to absorb. They will fluff up and float to the surface as they expand whilst absorbing the flavours of the stew. Then they will have a lovely gooey exterior and nice moist & tasty interior. Once you’ve made a stew with them, you won’t be able to stop using them every time.
It’s best to make them fairly small though, and have plenty of space above the liquid for them to expand into. The worst thing is having them stick to the lid. For that reason, I reckon the le Creuset Sauteuse is the ideal pan to use for any dumpling stew. It is relatively deep, whilst being easy to stir, so has plenty of space for the dumplings to expand. The shallow lid helps the veggies caramelise, but also crisps up the very top of the dumplings, so you get lots of textures in one dumpling.
I like to add in some ancient grains too, and Dove’s Farm have an amazing range from spelt, emmer & einkorn to name a few. Make sure to add some baking powder so that they fluff up nicely.
So the next time you want to make an oven dish, think about adding some of these delicious savoury dumplings for stews to the mix.
General purpose savoury dumplings
Equipment
- wide oven proof pan
- Food processor
- Digital scales
- measuring spoons
Ingredients
- 120 g flour – can be a mix of spelt/emmer or self-raising wholemeal.
- 60 g vegetable suet
- 3 teasps baking powder
- 11 tbsps. of soya milk
- 2 tsps. veg stock
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp herbes de provence
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
Instructions
- Weigh all dry ingredients into a food processor bowl.
- Pulse blitz until just fine crumbs
- Add the soya milk
- Stir well, and then leave to absorb the water and settle around 20mins.
- Knead into a ball of dough
- Lightly flour a clean dry surface.
- Roll the dough out with your hands into a long sausage – as uniform as possible.
- Cut in half lengthways and half again, finally into thirds – see photos
- Pick up each piece and roll into a ball in the palms of your hands.
- Make a well in the stew (which should be quite liquid) and drop the dumplings in.
- They take about 30 to 60 minutes to swell up and cook fully.
Notes
• You can of course vary any of the flavourings – they’re just my take on it.
• This amount makes 16 modest sized dumplings.
• They are quite wet on first mixing, but firm up as the moisture is absorbed. I like to make them quite wet at first – otherwise there’s a tendency for them to be too dry and not fluff up well during the cooking. But use less liquid if you want them less fluffy.
• A technique which may work is to make them in advance, then freeze them so they can be placed more easily in the stew!
