Blueberry Grunt

You're probably thinking "Grunt? Sandi that sounds awful," but just hear me out. A grunt is very much like a cobbler and is thus named because of the 'I ate too much but man that was good' sound made by someone who just ate it. This is a recipe I wrote down, with super fast speed, while watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen one day (I don't have cable and so the cooking shows I watch are limited to the ones available on the 3 different PBS stations I get. That's right. I get THREE PBS stations.). It is delicious and oh thnikkaman, there are a BUNCH of blueberries in it! This is definitely one to make when they're in season, or you might have to sell your firstborn child to buy enough berries. I would also like to take this moment to say that making this meant the first time I got to use my beautiful Dutch oven! So fun!

For the blueberries:
8 cups blueberries, divided
6 TB sugar
2 TB water
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp corn starch
1 TB lemon juice

Put 4 cups of the blueberries into a Dutch oven, add the sugar, water, cinnamon, and lemon zest; mix. Turn heat on medium-high, cook 10-12 minutes, until blueberries start to release juices and become jam-like.
Whisk together the corn starch and lemon juice; add to the blueberry mixture. Add 4 more cups of blueberries, heat through for about a minute, turn off heat, leave on the stove.

For the topping:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
6 TB melted butter
1 tsp vanilla

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Combine wet ingredients in a separate bowl and then fold into the dry until just combine. It will be a very moist dough.
Use an ice cream scoop (About 1 1/2-2 TB size) to spoon on top of the filling, about 1/4 inch away from each other. It will be about 4 in the center of the Dutch oven and 10 around the outside, give or take.
Cover the top of the pot with a large kitchen towel, put lid on, pull up the 4 corners of the towel and secure around the handle.
Turn on low heat for about 16-25 minutes; dumplings should have risen and doubled in size.
Combine 2 TB sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon, sprinkle over finished dumplings.

*Mine took a bit longer than 25 minutes actually; about 30-32. Also, they rose and doubled, but they also sank into the blueberry mixture so it looked like they had gotten smaller when they hadn't (kind of like an iceberg...).




Here's round one for the blueberry mixture! Right before mixing and turning on the heat.
(Just now when I typed that, the song that goes "The heat is on! Da nuh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh" came into my head. The da nuh part is a trumpet or something I think. I'm really not quite sure. I haven't heard it in years. I am really digressing here)



This is what it looked like after 10 minutes, ready to add the other half of the berries in.



Here are the yummy dumplings dumped on! The dough was so good. I may or may not have licked the bowl dry.



This is what it should look like while cooking with the towel on top. My towel wasn't big enough to secure around the handle, but it stayed in place. You might be thinking 'What is the towel for?' Well I will tell you. It absorbs a lot of the moisture so that the dumplings don't. Pretty neat! Also, isn't my Dutch oven beautiful?

Here it is finished with the cinnamon/sugar mixture on top! I like how the blueberries give the dumplings a pistachio color. Okay maybe I don't like it so much, but it makes it look interesting!

Is there really any other way to eat a cobbler type food than with vanilla ice cream?