Chicken Dumplings

Cheater’s Chicken and Dumplings

This easy recipe takes advantage of store-bought ingredients.

  • 1 lb. chicken tenders
  • 1 quart to ½ gallon water
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon pepper
  • 1 quart or 32 oz. Swanson’s chicken broth
  • 1 roll cheap refrigerator biscuits (10 biscuits in a roll)
  • 1 can Campbell’s cream of chicken soup

Bring chicken tenders and about 1 quart of water to a boil with salt and pepper.  Boil until chicken is cooked through.  Remove chicken tenders to a plate and cut into bite sized pieces when cool.  Keep pot of seasoned water (now a thin broth thanks to cooking chicken in it) hot.  Add Swanson’s chicken broth and return to a boil.  Open the can of biscuits and cut each biscuit in half (half-moon pieces).  Drop biscuits into boiling broth.  Stir to separate.  When biscuits are puffed up and cooked through, return chicken to pot and add cream of chicken soup to thicken.  Stir gently until all ingredients are well combined.

Serves 4 with a small amount of leftovers.  You can stretch it to serve 6-8 by adding two sides like a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber, and a bowl of sliced cantaloupe or other melon.

Other options:

  • For working moms and dads, cook the chicken on Saturday or Sunday and reserve both chicken and resulting broth in a covered container until the night for this meal.  The rest of the preparation can be done in about 15 minutes.
  • Need a meal in a pinch?  Use canned chicken, Swanson’s broth, soup and left-over flour tortillas which have been cut into 1-inch wide strips.  Strips will break apart and take on the appearance of thin dumplings when stirring.
  • Want a more hearty meal?  Cut 2 stalks celery, 1 cup baby carrots and ¼ onion into bite-size pieces and cook with chicken.  Complete rest of steps as indicated.  Vegetables can remain in broth when cooking dumplings.

Carlyn Foshee Chatfield

Chicken and Dumplings for 20

If you need to feed a lot of people and don’t have a big budget, chicken and dumplings can be a cheap and filling one-bowl meal.

  • 20 chicken tenders
  • 2 quarts Swanson Chicken Broth
  • 5 carrots, sliced to bite-size (fit easily in an eating spoon)
  • 5 ribs celery, sliced to bite-size (fit easily in an eating spoon)
  • 1 medium yellow onion, sliced to bite-size (fit easily in an eating spoon)
  • 4 cans cheap refrigerator biscuits
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • ½ teaspoon pepper
  • 3 cans cream of chicken soup

Cover chicken tenders with water in large soup pot.  Add salt and pepper and chopped vegetables.  Bring soup to boil.  Boil for 5 minutes and reduce heat to simmer.  Cook until vegetables are tender and chicken is cooked through.  (Tip: this mixture can simmer all day on low heat in a crockpot and you can finish the recipe when you get home from school or work.)

Remove vegetables and chicken from water (by now a thin broth).  Shred chicken.  Cover shredded chicken and vegetables to keep warm while working on dumplings.

Cut each of the round biscuits into half moons; each biscuit makes 2 dumplings.

Add Swanson’s chicken broth to water that covered chicken and bring liquids to a boil.  Drop in dumplings and stir once with a wooden spoon to separate.  Continue adding dumplings and stirring (not too much!) to separate, until all biscuit pieces are in the boiling broth.  Add the chicken soup to the shredded chicken and vegetables and add this mixture to the dumpling pot.  Stir gently to combine; too much stirring breaks up dumplings.

Need even more?  Double the ingredients to server 40, but don’t try to cook everything at once. This recipe is hard to double and still get all the dumplings cooked and tender.  Make two separate pots instead.

Carlyn Foshee Chatfield