Southern Chicken and Dumplings | Old-Fashioned Rolled Dumplings

Published: January 2020 // Updated: April 2023

Grits are grits, biscuits are biscuits, gumbo is gumbo, and black-eyed peas are black-eyed peas. If you use the term “Southern” to reference certain dishes, then you probably aren’t from the South.

But Chicken and Dumplings might be an exception to this rule. Apparently, versions of this dish exist in other parts of the country that do not remotely resemble the simple, homey, comfort food found in Louisiana.

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When The New York Times published a recipe for “Quick Chicken and Dumplings,” they described the dish as a soup and suggested butternut squash as an ingredient. Perhaps northerners eat soupy squash with dumplings regularly, but traditional Southern Chicken and Dumplings are what you should be making.

Nostalgia in the Kitchen

As a child, one of my ultimate comfort foods was Chicken and Dumplings from a local 24-hour diner, Murrell’s. My mother also made the dish, but whenever possible I’d request a plate of Murrell’s chicken & dumplings and a slice of their chocolate icebox pie. As an adult, I’m positive I would choose my mother’s dumplings over the gooey diner version, but Murrell’s no longer exists, so this theory can’t be tested.

After seeing the soupy-squashy NYT Cooking recipe, mild panic set in when I realized it had been ages since I last made chicken and dumplings. Would my nearly-grown Texan children still have an appreciation for the beloved southern dish? For the sake of cultural preservation, I vowed to bring the recipe back into rotation.

Rolled Dumplings vs. Dropped Dumplings

Dumplings are easier to make than biscuits. But when I jumped online to remind myself of ingredient ratios, the recipes that surfaced bore little resemblance to the dish I ate as a child.

I was looking for flat rolled dumplings and a thickened sauce. However the recipes that surfaced were brothy soups versus a thicker gravy or sauce. And the recipes called for puffy drop dumplings versus flat cut dumplings.

According to Wikipedia, soupy versions of the dish are popular in the Midwest.
According to Serious Eats, different styles of dumplings are a noted difference in Northern and Southern dishes.

At this point, I was curious enough to pull out the old cookbooks.

What is a dumpling?

Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking describes dumplings as:

“essentially coarse, informal portions of dough or batter that are dropped into a pot of boiling water and cooked through … dumpling doughs are minimally kneaded to maximize tenderness … cooking is judged by the position of the dumpling in the pot; when it rises to the top, it’s considered almost done”

Vintage Cookbooks & Food Memories

Older regional Louisiana cookbooks seemed like a logical place to start, but surprisingly most don’t include chicken and dumpling recipes. The dish is even absent from southern cookbooks published in the 1960’s and 70’s, like Louisiana Entertains and A Cook’s Tour.

The 1980’s Colorful Louisiana Cuisine in Black and White by Bibby Tate and Ethel Dixon includes a recipe with drop dumplings.

My copy of The Joy of Cooking has an entry for Chicken and Dumplings that refers to two separate recipes — chicken fricassee and dumplings — but the dumplings were balled, so I moved on.

Emeril’s Louisiana Real & Rustic showed more promise. Tucked inside with his recipe for dropped dumplings were my notes on rolling dumplings. And Emeril’s brief recipe headnote gave some insight into why those of us from north Louisiana fondly remember the simple dish:

“It’s not a gumbo, it’s not a stew; but people in north Louisiana adore it. At cafes and restaurants in and around Shreveport, chicken and dumplings are usually a daily special.”

North Louisiana food traditions are actually more closely related to those of other southern states versus South Louisiana, but John Folse’s Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine includes a classic recipe with rolled flat dumplings.

Finally, a basic recipe for Old-Fashioned Chicken and Dumplings turned up in a newer Junior League of Tallahassee cookbook, Thymes Remembered.

Next, I called a sibling to ask what they remembered about the dish growing up and what version they makes. They described the diner version exactly as I remembered: chicken with chewy rectangular dumplings, no vegetables, and hearty enough to be served on a plate and eaten with a fork.

Then they reminisced about coming home from school to find our mother’s dumplings rolled out on the counter ready to be cooked for dinner. If you are a lucky southerner, you also have a copy of your mama’s handwritten recipe telling you to “strain the stock thru an old diaper or cheesecloth.”

Chicken & Slicks

At this point, I turned back to the internet to dig a little deeper. A recipe from Texas Monthly introduced me to the term slick dumpling. This new-to-me term led to additional resources:

New Orleans’ Times-Picayune offers a recipe for Chicken and Slicks originating in north Louisiana.
Cook’s Country suggests cooking dumplings or “slicks” in unthickened broth to prevent them from breaking apart.
The Splendid Table offers Chicken and Dumplings inspired by Edna Lewis. If you watch the associated Cook’s Country video, watch to the end to see a thicker consistency versus what is shown earlier in the clip.
This recipe from Serious Eats is of interest. And SE offers an in-depth history on the dish here — if only I’d found this article hours earlier!
An essay from a north Louisiana native says: “Chicken and dumplings is a delicious meal that’s unlikely to win many hearts on Instagram.”
Alton Brown makes both dropped and rolled dumplings. His show’s transcript includes some history of the variations. Note, Alton’s recipe for rolled dumplings is the only one I came across that instructs you to leave the rolled dumplings on the kitchen counter all day covered by a tea towel like my mother’s recipe.

Watch how to make real Chicken & Dumplings

Here’s a whole batch of YouTube videos for those of you who didn’t grow up with the dish. Each one of these cooks has their own technique, but not all are recommended — watch here, here, here, here, and here.

This video of Chef Sean Brock on PBS’s The Mind of a Chef showcases dropped dumplings. But his mild frustration regarding his mother’s lack of exact measurements is experienced by most of us when asking a parent for a favorite family recipe or technique.

How to Make Rolled Flat Dumplings

Remember, none of this is an exact science.

Water, broth, or milk? As the videos above show, there are many approaches to making dumplings. The simplest version of a dumpling is just flour and water. When cooking with homemade broth, I use broth. And if using store bought broth, I mix the dry ingredients with milk.

Basic dumpling recipe: For every quart of broth in your dish, measure approximately 1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp. kosher salt, and 1/2 tsp. baking powder. Then use enough liquid to bring a sticky dough together. On a well-floured surface, fold the dough a few times using flour as you go to prevent sticking. Roll the dumpling dough to about 1/8” thick. Using plenty of flour when rolling the dough will also help thicken the sauce.

Cutting: A great tip in one of the videos above is to use a pizza cutter to cut the dumplings. Cut the dumplings any shape or size your prefer. We typically cut dumplings roughly 2-inches across. A bench scraper is very useful for lifting the dumplings off your counter and into the pot.

Update:Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of Africa American Cookingincludes these wonderfully inexact instructions from Willa Mitchell’s 1977 Black American Cook Book:

“To cook the slick downs, take one good dipper of water and a pinch of salt, add one good handful of flour to make your dough soft. Pat out until very thin. Pinch in strips, not so wide. Stretch them before laying them in the liquid.”

What Not to Do

Some recipes for “quick” chicken and dumplings suggest rolling out canned biscuits, but making homemade dumplings takes just a few minutes. Opening a can of store-bought biscuits and wrangling the dough out would take just as much time as making your dumplings from scratch. Promise.

Old-Fashioned Southern Chicken and Dumplings

Use any one of the resources linked above as a starting point. The traditional, from-scratch, old-fashioned recipe is as easy as 1-2-3:

Make broth. Cover a chicken with water. Add aromatic vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, etc.), herbs (thyme, bay leaves, etc.), salt, peppercorns and cook for about 1 hour, or until chicken cooked. Strain broth, reserve meat, discard everything else.
Make dumplings. Mix your preferred ingredients (see dumpling recipe above), fold the dough, roll, and cut. Again, use plenty of flour when rolling the dumplings to help the sauce thicken.
Make dinner. Bring the broth to a boil, drop in dumplings, cook, turn down the heat, add reserved cooked chicken, allow the dish to heat and thicken (the longer it cooks, the thicker it will be). If dumplings still taste doughy, let it keep cooking. Check seasonings, add freshly ground black pepper. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Recipe Variations

Make it colorful: Sauté chopped onion, celery, and/or carrot in a little butter, stir in your broth and proceed with cooking dumplings.
Make it thicker: If you want to ensure a thicker sauce, make a light roux of butter and flour. Just sprinkle a bit of flour over the butter/veggie mixture above and cook for a few minutes before adding liquid. This step really isn’t needed if using plenty of flour when rolling the dumplings.
Make it creamier: If your recipe calls for “cream of whatever” soup, skip that and stir in a bit of half-and-half or cream before serving and heat through.
Make it quick: Take a shortcut by using a high-quality, low-sodium store-bought broth and leftovers from a slow cooker chicken or rotisserie chicken.

Slow Cooker Chicken & Dumplings

Recipe: Roll and cut dumplings (instructions above). Using your slow cooker’s sauté feature or a pan on the stove, sauté chopped onion, celery, and/or carrot in butter, sprinkle with a little flour, cook a few minutes. Stir in low-sodium chicken broth. Nestle boneless, skinless chicken thighs and dumplings in the broth, add water if needed, cover and cook on HIGH for about 2-3 hours, or 4-6 hours on LOW, or until chicken and dumplings are cooked. If dumplings still taste doughy, let it keep cooking. Remove cooked chicken and cut into pieces or shred, then return to pot. Check seasonings. Garnish with freshly ground black pepper and chopped parsley.
Ingredients are approximated. But for example, for 1 to 1.5 pounds chicken use: 1-quart broth, 1/2 medium onion, 1-2 stalks celery, a handful of baby carrots, a few tablespoons oil/butter and flour. Plus one dumpling recipe from above.
Variation: If using leftover cooked chicken, add it at the end to heat through.