From scratch, chicken and dumplings, made in a slow cooker and using a whole chicken for a homemade stock, a creamy roux base and drop dumplings.

Slow Cooker Chicken with Drop Dumplings

I love chicken and dumplings. Love it! It's one of my favorite dishes and that goes for any time of the year, not just winter.

While I do tend to follow the same basic guidelines, even with a variety of methods, I'm not married to any one of them. So many folks make chicken and dumplings one way all of their life, but I love playing around with it!

A flavorful grilled chicken, marinated in a bold and zesty blend of oil, citrus, garlic and fiery seasonings. Traditionally served with white rice, shown here with a mild, Spanish rice and skillet fried green beans.

Mojo Chicken - Pollo Asado

Literally translated, polo asado means barbecued or grilled (and sometimes even roasted) chicken, though it appears that it most often refers to chicken that is soaked in a mojo-style marinade and cooked on a grill. It's another one of those roadside/food truck favorites, in the same camp with the vinegar chicken I shared recently.

In this case I'm using a homemade mojo marinade in place of a commonly used commercial sour orange product {affil link} which not only is next to impossible to find here on the Mississippi coast, but also tends to contain additional sugars and preservatives you may not want.

Instant Pot/Electronic Pressure Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup

Homemade chicken noodle soup, made from a whole chicken in an electronic pressure cooker.

Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

If you've been a friend of this blog for any amount of time, you already know that I love my food cooked the old-fashioned way - in the oven or on the top of the stove, low and slow. It's part of the whole process that birthed this recipe website to begin with - connecting to my Mama and Grandma through cooking, after Hurricane Katrina changed my entire career path overnight.

There's just something magical that happens with that low and slow process that makes you understand the whole emotional connection to our past while cooking for someone in the present, and how it literally explodes the flavor in a dish that just doesn't happen any other way.

Step by Step How to Make Homemade Southern Style Chicken and Dumplings

Homemade from scratch, Southern style chicken and dumplings, made from a whole chicken and rolled dumplings, and served here with steamed, buttered carrots, crowder peas and corn muffins.

Homemade Southern Style Chicken and Dumplings

I didn't grow up with what many of you deem to be a classic Southern style rolled dumpling. Mama's chicken and dumplings had fluffy little puffs of biscuit dough floating in them and they were so good. It's the way I made them when I moved on from my parent's house to the house I shared with my husband, and they remain my favorite still today.

Frankly, no two Southerners are likely to agree on how chicken and dumplings should be made anyway, but I know of quite a few other Southerners who quietly admit that they grew up with drop dumplings too. Guess it just all depends on what you grew up with.

A good hearty, southern chicken stew, made from a stewed chicken, fresh potatoes and your choice of veggie add-ins.

Homemade Chicken Stew

A hearty stew is a good thing when the weather turns cold and this homemade chicken stew sure made me happy today.

It's been a bit gloomy around here for a few days - overcast, rainy and then cold weather moved in here last night with a vengeance. I stepped outside with the pup - gotta watch over him because we've had a couple close-up encounters with possums and raccoons here lately - and brrrrr y'all.

The temperature must've dropped 40 degrees in just a few hours! I was happy that I had this stew made up, that's for sure.

The shortcut version of chicken stew that I have posted before, is a super easy and flavorful recipe for anytime you're in a hurry for a quick stew, but when you have a little more time on your hands to stew down a chicken, the added flavor from that homemade stock is just amazing.

Pot Roasted Chicken - Chicken in a Pot with Bacon, Onion and Potatoes

Whole chicken, slow-roasted in a covered Dutch oven, with bacon, onion & potatoes. Add a nice garden salad & a loaf of warmed French bread for sopping up those marvelous pan juices.

Chicken in a Pot

I happened to catch whole chickens on sale for 67 cents a pound recently, so of course I stocked up on a few and had in mind one of them would land as another form of roasted chicken for the Sunday Supper series for sure.  But, as I do sometimes, about mid-stream of beginning to prep the chicken for roasting, I decided to pull down Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking {affil link} and do something different.

A basic garlic and lemon roasted chicken with root vegetables cooked alongside.

Garlic Roasted Chicken with Vegetables

There is just something so heart-warming about a roasted chicken, isn't there? It's one of my favorite kitchen aromas.

The fragrance drifts throughout the house and just smells so wonderful, that sometimes I wonder if it's mostly because it invokes memories associated more with holidays past, than the present situation.

Thank goodness a nice roast chicken is easy enough to have much more often than the full-blown holiday spread!

Turn a whole chicken into a wonderful home rotisserie style chicken, slow roasted, loaded with flavor and as tender as can be!

Mimi's Rotisserie Style Sticky Chicken

There must be a hundred sticky chicken recipes on the internet for how to make a homemade rotisserie chicken, every one different from what I consider to be the original sticky chicken - Mimi's.

Several years back when I had a few extra mouths to feed and was working more than full time, I did the once a month freezer method of cooking. This sticky chicken was one of the most popular chicken recipes back then to make ahead and reserve the meat for casseroles. It's one of the carryovers I have held onto all these years, and that I still love today.

This simple roasted chicken using butter and plenty of lemon, has a bit of a reputation of garnering marriage proposals, enough so that it has been dubbed the engagement chicken.

Lemon Roasted Chicken

Legend has it, that the original "engagement chicken" first made its appearance almost 30 years ago now, when a Glamour magazine editor shared the recipe for a simple, roasted chicken with an assistant, who prepared it for her boyfriend one evening.

A month later he proposed. While you can read more about the story here, all that aside, it's certainly a great recipe for a roasted chicken. There is just something so comforting about the smell of a chicken roasting, that it's one of my favorite methods of cooking chicken.

Baked Chicken with Honey Orange and Garlic Ginger Glaze

Whole cut up chicken marinated and baked in a honey, orange and soy garlic ginger sauce.

Baked Chicken with Honey Orange, Garlic and Ginger Glaze

This chicken offers a fantastic contrast between the tang of the hot sauce with the sweet orange and honey against the traditional flavors of soy and ginger in this dish and is a pleasant surprise from more typical honey and soy combination for chicken.

Frequent basting produces a pretty glazed surface and pulls double duty as a very tasty side sauce as well. Just delicious and The Cajun absolutely loves it. The best part?

It's super easy to put together.

How to oven roast a large hen or turkey.

Oven Roasted Hen or Turkey with Buttery Pan Sauce

This post was written for open roasting (meaning not covered or wrapped) and using a 7 pound hen, but it is the same basics for roasting a turkey, so everything pretty much applies to a small or large turkey with timing adjustments, of course.

While you're here, be sure to check out my other posts for how to brine, how to truss a bird, and also click here for some holiday side dishes like, Homemade Herb Dressing, Parslied Corn, Carottes Glacées, Maple Glazed Baby Carrots, Mashed Potatoes with Cream Cheese, Traditional Southern Sweet Potato Casserole and other southern favorites.