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When I make soup, I put the entire uncooked bird into the stock pot, along with carrots, cerely, onions and simmer it for about 3.5 hours. I pull the bird out, skin it, and retain the meat.
I then add noodles, or puree the cooked veggies and broth with a puree stick/wand and turn it into chicken and dumplings. If I do that, I add more raw carrots and raw celery, s & p, and cook for another hour and make then make the dumplings (Bisquick + parsley) the last 20 mins.
I mound the chicken in-between two dumplings, arrange the carrots and celery sticks on top of the chicken, pour the broth over the entire meal, and viola, chicky dumps.
Rick, I think you're makng a couple of small mistakes. First, skin the chicken before putting it in the stockpot. There's a lot of fat in the skin that will need to be removed later and it doesn't add anything to the flavor. I also prefer to cut the bird up so that the bones are able to better flavor the stock. Second, when you remove the chicken from the stockpot, set it aside to cool and drain before de-boning and strain the stock. There is no earthly reason to leave those mushy cooked out vegetables in your soupstock. Mash them and feed them to the dog, he'll really appreciate it. Once the stock has been strained out add fresh vegetables cut to 1/4 inch dice along with noodles, rice or barley, bring it back to the boil until they are tender. Add in the meat and serve or... Use your immersion blender to puree the second batch of vegetables which should be sufficiently tender within a half hour. At this point I usually add some heavy cream and a dash of sherry to finish the soup. Chicken and dumplings of course want a larger dice and I thicken the stock with a roux for those. Do you do drop dumplings or rolled dumplings?
