Easy Chicken and Dumplings With Biscuits
When you think of Southern comfort food, I bet chicken and dumplings rank up there with the best. This recipe is simple, scrumptious, and packed full of flavor.
A Southern favorite, easy chicken and dumplings is basically a thick and creamy chicken stew paired with pillow-like dumplings. The dish, like most Southern comfort food, evolved out of necessity and practicality. Back in the day, chicken was a treat and not something offered or even available on a regular basis. Whenever it was, the chicken was more often than not on the scrawny side.
Thankfully, today chicken is a staple in many people’s diets. So for your next chicken dinner, why not try this homemade chicken dumpling recipe with biscuits? A family favorite, this recipe may be simple, but it’s also scrumptious and the perfect creamy dish for a cozy winter dinner (or as cozy as it gets around here).
If you’re in a dumpling mood, make sure you check out these other delectable dumplings from scratch recipes too: sweet potato dumplings and apple dumplings.
Recipe Ingredients
- Chicken
- One can of Pillsbury flaky layers biscuits
- Flour (self-rising or plain, doesn’t matter)
- Chicken broth
- Cream of chicken soup – here is a homemade recipe for cream of chicken soup if you prefer.
How to Make Chicken and Dumplings
Now, I usually stew a whole chicken but today I had boneless skinless chicken breast and no chicken so this is what we got. Feel free to drop a few chicken bouillon cubes into your water in place of the broth.
Sometimes I make crockpot chicken ahead of time in water, sometimes I cook it in the broth, sometimes I use , and sometimes I buy a rotisserie chicken already cooked. Go with your mood on this, just get your chicken cooked, then set it aside.
Pour your broth into a pot.
Add cream of chicken soup.
Stir and let it come to a very gentle boil while you prepare the dumplings.
To prepare the dumplings, put a little bit of flour (about a cup) in a large bowl. Add some salt and pepper – about 1/2 a teaspoon each or whatever you prefer. Stir that up a bit.
Take all of your biscuits out of the can and set them on a plate.
Now, we’re going to take each canned biscuit and tear it into three layers like this.
Dip each layer into your flour mixture…
Make sure you coat both sides until they look like this.
Now, make sure you don’t skip this step. If you do, your dumplings will completely dissolve in the broth. That is exactly what I did the very first time I ever made a chicken and dumplings recipe. I ended up with a delicious dumpling-flavored soup!
Now, take each layer and tear it into three pieces.
Reduce heat so that your chicken stock is just barely barely barely boiling and drop dumpling pieces in one at a time.
It is important that you DO NOT STIR. We are not going to stir these as we don’t want our dumplings cooking up. If you do stir, you will basically cause your dumplings to dissolve.
Instead of stirring, what we are going to do is just gently push the dumplings down into the chicken stock as they cook.
This is going to take ten minutes or so. Your dumplings will take shape and stop looking doughy as they firm up a bit.
Continue simmering your dumplings while you shred the cooked chicken. If you want to know an easy way to shred meat you can find that here.
Drop your shredded chicken into the dumplings and very gently stir that up. I really just push it down a bit as I did with the dumplings. Just be gentle.
And there you go y’all! You just make an old-fashioned chicken and dumpling recipe your family will LOVE!
Storage
- Store your chicken and dumplings in an airtight container in the fridge for up to five days. They’re even better the next day as the dumplings continue to soak up the broth. You can reheat the dish either on the stove or in the microwave.
- You can also freeze leftovers in an airtight container for up to five months.
Recipe Notes
- If you want to add some vegetables to this recipe, you can add a can of carrot and peas to the broth when you add the chicken. Another option is to add some sauteed onion.
- If you prefer to make homemade dumplings with homemade biscuit dough, check out my recipes here and here.
- If you’d like to add some seasoning, cook the in , , or .
Recipe FAQs
What do you serve with chicken and dumplings?
Pair this Southern main dish with other great Southern side dishes, like cornbread, fresh green beans, and fried okra. You could also just serve it with a simple side salad or some roasted brussels sprouts.
You might also enjoy these other chicken recipes:
Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings
Ingredients
- 3 or 4 chicken breasts
- 32 oz chicken broth feel free to use water with bouillon cubes added
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 1 can Pilsbury layers biscuits 10 individual
- salt and pepper to taste
- flour
Instructions
- Cook chicken breasts in approx. 4 c. of water until fork-tender, about 45 minutes.3 or 4 chicken breasts
- Place broth in a medium to large-sized pot. Stir cream of chicken soup into gently boiling broth. Add salt and pepper to taste.32 oz chicken broth, 1 can cream of chicken soup, salt and pepper to taste
- Pull biscuits apart into three layers. Dip each layer into the flour and then tear each layer into three pieces and drop into gently boiling broth mixture.1 can Pilsbury layers biscuits, flour
- Do not stir biscuits a lot or they will cook up. Only gently push dumplings down into broth as they float to the top. Cook for about ten minutes after the last dumplings are added.
- Tear up the chicken and add it to the broth mixture. Turn to low until ready to serve.
Video
Nutrition
Thank you – I have spent days and hours viewing recipes for the perfect chicken and dumpling.
I love your step by step instruction.
Can’t wait to get started.
Thanks for taking time to do this.
Kimberly
🙂 I hope you and your family enjoy them as much as mine does!!
Hi Christy 🙂 I look forward to trying your recipe soon. My family loves chicken and dumplings. I’ve always used Bisquick for my dumplings like my Grandma and Mom, but I am anxious to try your recipe with the biscuits. Thank you!
I hope you enjoy them Jenny!!
Hi Christy! Thank you for the step by step instructions; they are the best I’ve seen! For the first time, my dumplings didn’t dissolve. However, because I didn’t stir, they burned on the bottom – badly! I had my heat on medium. Was the heat too high? If so, what setting do you recommend? The biscuits we used were the giant-sized ones, but I separated them into 3-4 layers, and pressed them really thin. Do you think this had an effect? I am determined to make good dumplings! Thanks for any advice!
Laura, I love this simple recipe but mine have burned every time I’ve tried this, with the chicken even sticking to the bottom. I’m not new to chicken and dumplings and control the temperature, but everything still sticks, and I don’t like to use nonstick pans for boiling things. Maybe it’s my electric stove? Anyway, I’ve taken to boiling the dumplings (I make them different ways) separately and transferring them directly from the water into the very lightly boiling broth, and add the chicken last. Because the dumplings are hot and directly out of the water and into the broth, they still soak up some of the chicken broth and taste great!
I know I’m way late commenting on this, but I just had to share a little tip my E-ma gave me when I was first learning how to make chicken and dumplings: It’s the steam that cooks the dumplings. What I do is boil my chicken breast in with the broth and some sliced carrots- for the extra flavor- and when my chicken is done and the carrots are tender, I pinch each Grand biscuit into 5 equal sized pieces, and drop it into the broth as a ball. I make sure the broth is covering each dumpling by giving it a poke like Christy suggests, then recover my pot. I bring it back up to a simmer, then knock the heat down to low. As long as you’ve returned it to a slow boil before turning the heat down, it can sit on low for the 8 or 9 minutes needed to steam the dumplings. I make a roux base using some broth and flour, no liquid added, then scrape that into the pot when my dumplings are done, stirring it until the broth thickens. I use cream of chicken to thicken the broth if I have it, or sometimes a packet of chicken gravy with just enough cold water to dissolve the mix. This method has proven fool proof for me over the past twenty years. I wish I could make dumplings from scratch as so many of the ladies I’ve known can do, but alas, the skill of making biscuit dough has always eluded me!
Thanks so much Christy for telling me why I always end up with dumplin stew LOL. I thought it was something to do with using canned biscuits, because when I made my dumplins from biscuit dough they didn’t disappear. As it has already been stated many times, thank you so much for your post.
people give you trouble about this recipe?!?!?, funny, it is how my mother taught me how to make chicken and dumplings, she said it was the way her mama made it too. must be a Alabama thing.
Would really like a recipe for old-fashioned chicken and dumplings were you actually make the drop dumplings from scratch do you have one of those recipes? I’ve been trying to do this often on for a long time and have not been that successful do you think you could help me I don’t know where else to turn help!!
I forgot to add I want the dumplings are big and fluffy when u drop them in there they just puff up . Thank
Please help
I have used this as a basic C&D recipe for years, but I like to use the “butter tasting” or “butter flavored” pillsbury biscuits because I also like the round puffed up dumplings as opposed to the flat ones. I just cut the canned butter biscuits into 1/4 ‘s, dip each piece into flour and gently drop into my broth. The butter in the biscuit dough does make it a bit more greasy, but the flavor is fantastic enough to ignore the extra grease. (My kids always called this dish “Chicken & Grease”, but devoured it anyway. Of course you can always avoid the extra butter and just use plain biscuits, but the flavor is not the same. Enjoy!
Hi, my mother wasn’t the dumpling expert that was my auntie Georgia, for chicken and dumplings from scratch, take a whole cut up chicken, I just buy a fryer place in large pot with water some onion salt and pepper bring to a boil, simmer for a good long time, when the chicken is falling off the bones, turn it off. You can let it cool or burn your fingers if you don’t have enough time til supper. Pull the chicken from the pot, separating it from the bones and skin, once all the chicken is separated throw the bones and skin out, strain the broth and put into the pot, it needs a nice tight lid, so the dumplings cook right. Put the chicken and broth into the pot, you can add onions, carrots and celery bits if you want, we mostly made it without . Bring to a simmer, get your dumplings ready to stir up, this consists of 1 cup of flour, 1 heaping teaspoon of baking powder, a bit of salt and pepper and dried herbs to your taste, my aunt used parsley, when its ready and simmering well, stir the dumplings up with a bit of water until its a soft dough, but not runny. Drop the dough by tablespoons into the simmering broth, making sure it keeps simmering, once all the dough is in the broth, put the lid on and cook for 20 minutes without taking thelid off. This is the important part, you need a pot that will take the broth and dumplings with out the dumplings touching the top the dumplings while cooking melt a bit on the bottom, adding flour to the broth, they will rise and puff up making an almost solid top, its a bit of trial and error to get the right pot, the right amount of dumpling etc. You can add or divide the dumpling recipe depending on pot size. This is one of those slow cooking meals, that would have been started after breakfast for supper.
No… Canned biscuits instead of scratch?
Christy: I did make this today, on a cold, rainy day in California, (finally!) so it was especially nice for that reason. I did have a bit of trouble separating the biscuits, and thought that part was a bit tedious, however, I plugged on and followed your instructions to the letter, and I am now on my second bowl and I think the dumplings were worth every bit of the effort. This is going into my regular rotation! Thanks!
This may actually be your best recipe. I’d certainly vote for it, much as I love the Dishpan Cookies. I think the cookies have been knocked out of first. 8)
I love this recipe for Southern chicken and dumplings! My hubby and kids cleaned their plates and all wanted seconds. That says it all for me!