Dolly Parton's Go-To Dinner Is A Comforting Southern Staple

Dolly Parton is often called the queen of country, but she's also a grand dame of country cooking. Born in Tennessee, her love for down-home Southern food was inspired by her mother's dishes. While she's partial to fast food — Dolly Parton's favorite Taco Bell order is simple — when she's whipping up a meal at home, she goes for full-on comfort food. 

Along with her multitudes of albums and movie appearances, she's also a cookbook author. Her first, "Dolly's Dixie Fixin's," featured her specialty, chicken and dumplings — or as she calls them — dumplin's. Although the book is now out of print, Parton shared her "can't live without it" recipe on Facebook, which is, unsurprisingly, based on her mother's version. 

There are a variety of ways to make this classic dish, but Parton's is 100% traditional and uses only a few ingredients. She cooks the chicken whole, with bones in and skin on, boiled in water with just an onion, celery leaves, salt, and pepper. This imbues the meat with the aromatics while simultaneously creating a flavorful broth. Once the chicken is fully cooked, it gets removed and chopped, and the broth is strained.

You can make chicken and dumplings easily with the help of canned biscuits, but Parton's are just as easy to make. She uses only flour, baking soda, salt, and shortening to make the dough, which she simmers in the broth. Once done, she adds the chicken back in to heat it, and it's ready to enjoy.

Dolly Parton's chicken and dumplings are almost as famous as she is. She told Today that she likes to cook for the cast when she's filming. She mentioned that her co-stars always ask, "When are you going to do the dumplings?" She'll often serve them alongside a batch of peanut butter fudge. Queen Latifah was reported in The Oklahoman as saying, "She cooked me some mean chicken and dumplings," when they worked together on "Joyful Noise." Even Parton's superstar goddaughter Miley Cyrus is a fan, telling Taste of Country that "Dolly made the best chicken and dumplings," and that she now makes her own vegan rendition.

Dolly isn't the only Parton with their own family recipe for the dish, either. In "Good Lookin' Cookin': A Year of Meals," a cookbook she co-wrote with her sister Rachel Parton George, her sibling's own Rustic Chicken and Dumplin's recipe is featured. It's Dolly's favorite, and her sister makes it for her on her birthday. 

In this recipe, chicken pieces are seasoned and browned in butter right in the pot. It gets boiled as well, but this time in chicken stock with onion, salt, and pepper, plus the addition of poultry seasoning, garlic, celery, and carrots. The dumplings are a bit more involved as well and are made with eggs and buttermilk. The resulting dish is soupy, colorful, and garnished with fresh parsley.