Cooking Instructions

• Clean the chicken the way you do it. Place the chicken in a large soup pot with 2 cups of boiling water, the pimento berries, salt, minced garlic and chopped onion. Bring to a boil, then add half the pumpkin. (Make sure this portion of pumpkin is chopped very small so that it cooks easily.)
• Once the pumpkin is cooked, crush it with a fork. (If you have a hand blender, cook the pumpkin and blend it out before adding the chicken, pimento berries and onion. I did it the old-fashioned way.) Add the corn.
• Add more water. Chop the corn into three pieces and add to the pot.
• Mix the flour, cornmeal, and salt (if using), then gradually add water until a stiff dough forms. Separate the dough into very small pieces and make round flat dumplings. Add then to the soup pot.
• Add the rest of the water, the chopped yellow yam, turnip, carrot, dasheen, coco and the remaining pumpkin.
• Stir in the soup mix. You may want to sieve it as I did, before adding it to the pot. To avoid lumping, mix the soup mix with a little of your soup broth before adding it to the pot.
• Add the scallion, thyme and scotch bonnet pepper. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, then turn the heat to medium-low and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until all the vegetables are cooked.
• Stir occasionally to stop the food from sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning. Midway, taste the soup and add more salt if needed.