Step 1

Gather your ingredients and mix the dry ingredients together. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. You can add spices to taste as well.Some recipes recommend using cake flour, but any flour should work.

Step 2

Heat the liquid. Bring the water or chicken/vegetable stock to almost boiling over medium-high heat in a wide soup pan or Dutch oven. Reduce the heat to medium once the water or stock is nearly boiling.The liquid will begin to form small bubbles on the bottom of the pan. When these small bubbles begin to float to the surface, the liquid is about to boil and the heat should be reduced.If you are making chicken and dumplings, you will prepare chicken soup and then drop the dumplings into the soup mix instead of heating liquid for them separately.

Step 3

Mix the cold milk or ice water into the flour mixture. Slowly add the cold liquid into the flour, mixing gently. The batter should become wet but remain fluffy. If it becomes runny, you have added too much liquid and you may need to mix in a bit more flour.Do not over-mix the batter. This can cause your dumplings to deflate.The amount of ice water or cold milk you need will be determined by the consistency of the dough, but it will likely be between 3⁄4 cup (180 ml) and 1 cup (240 ml).

Step 4

Drop the dumpling batter into the preheated liquid. Scoop out heaping spoonfuls of the dumpling batter and drop them into the near-boiling water or broth. Be sure to drop all of the dough while it is still cold.

Step 5

Cook on medium-high heat until dumplings are firm. Continue cooking the dumplings for approximately 15-20 minutes, or until they are firm and solid in the middle.Cover the pot while cooking to ensure that the dumplings heat evenly. This may require you to reduce the temperature slightly.When you think the dumplings are done cooking, you may want to remove one of the largest dumplings from the water/broth and cut it open to ensure that it is cooked through.

Step 6

Remove the dumplings from the heat and serve. Most dumplings are served in the broth that they were cooked in, so there is no need to remove the dumplings from the liquid they were cooked in. Just move the pot off of your cooktop and prepare to serve.Ladle the dumplings and broth into bowls.Keep any leftovers in an air-tight container in the refrigerator, and reheat on the stovetop.