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Although I grew up in the south, I didn’t really eat a lot of southern food growing up.
Most of our foods we’re pretty typical American standards—burgers, pizza, salads, Chili’s, but we also had lots of Jamaican food. As you know my family is Jamaican.
I didn’t really discover comfort classics until I spent some time with friends who were born and raised on some of these dishes.
One of my favorites but I ever encountered is chicken and dumplings.
While dumplings do have a place in Jamaican food culture, Southern chicken and dumplings is a lot different.

When I first attempted this over the summer, I was actually blown away by the fact that I could make it easily without having ever made it before.
It is not the most diabetes-friendly food, it will spike your blood sugar because of the flour and starches in the dish, but it is absolutely delicious.
What I love about this recipe is that it comes out thick and creamy.
Table of contents
- Ingredients & tools for chicken and dumplings
- How to make chicken and dumplings
- What to serve with Chicken and dumplings
- How to make chicken and dumplings diabetes-friendly
- Can you make chicken and dumplings in the instant pot or other pressure cookers?
- How to make chicken and dumplings thicker
- More recipes on HangryWoman.com
Ingredients & tools for chicken and dumplings
You do need a handful of ingredients to make this recipe, but it’s worth the grocery shop and the ingredients for this recipe are relatively inexpensive.

Ingredients for broth
- 2 tablespoons Avocado oil
- 2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed into 1” pieces.
- 1 cup diced white onion
- 1 cup sliced carrot
- 4 cloves garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 6 cups chicken broth
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ teaspoon fresh thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
Ingredients for dumplings
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon of thyme
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 ⅓ cups heavy cream
Tools
How to make chicken and dumplings

Start out by cooking your chicken on the sautee function until it’s brown on all sides. Remove it from the pot and set it aside in a bowl.
Reduce your heat to low (if possible on your machine) and add your carrot onion and garlic. Cook them all until tender and until the garlic is fragrant.
Add your butter and flour and stir constantly to keep lumps from forming. do this for 3 to 4 minutes.
Add your chicken back in plus any of the juices that have collected in the bowl you put it in. Then stir the chicken to coat it in the flour and butter roux.
Add in chicken broth, thyme, bay leaf and cream and turn on the saute function in your pot and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
Give the pot a stir.
Cover, and pressure cook for 8 minutes on high pressure with a quick release.
Make your dumplings while it’s cooking.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, thyme, garlic powder and cream. Stir until mixture comes together into a single mass of dough.
You can pull your dough by hand and measure, or use a small ice cream scoop to form the dough into round balls.
Place the dumplings into the pot, and cook for 10 minutes on high pressure, or until the dumplings are cooked completely through. As an optional step, you can also air fry the dumplings for some extra delicious texture.
Pull out your bay leaves and serve.
What to serve with Chicken and dumplings
This is a dish best served on it’s own in a bowl. You could certainly add a side of broccoli or spinach for some added veggies.
How to make chicken and dumplings diabetes-friendly
Unfortunately, this is one dish that is just high carb and high fat. My suggestion if you make this is to adjust portion sizes to limit your blood sugar spikes. Enjoy it as it is, just change your portion size.
Can you make chicken and dumplings in the instant pot or other pressure cookers?
Yes, this recipe is made in a Ninja Foodi Pressure Cooker. You can use the same cook times and methods for any pressure cooker – including the Instant Pot.
How to make chicken and dumplings thicker

Cooking the dumplings in the gravy will go a long way toward making the sauce thicker. The starches from the dumplings will release and in turn make the sauce thick. Give it a stir every once in a while to help it thicken.
I don’t currently have a stovetop version of this recipe. The cook times would need to be adjusted.
More recipes on HangryWoman.com
I hope you enjoy this recipe! Here are a few more around HangryWoman.com to browse.
- 6 filling diabetes-friendly breakfast recipes
- Low Carb White chocolate macadamia nut cookies
- Pressure Cooker Whole Chicken
- 19 low carb family-friendly meals
- Pumpkin Spice Cake pops

Pressure Cooker Chicken and Dumplings
5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star
4.9 from 16 reviews
- Author: Mila Clarke Buckley
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 1 pot of chicken and dumplings 1x
Ingredients
Broth and base
- 2 tablespoons Avocado oil
- 2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed into 1” pieces.
- 1 cup diced white onion
- 1 cup sliced carrot
- 4 cloves garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 6 cups chicken broth
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
Dumplings
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon of thyme
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
Instructions
- Start out by cubing your chicken. Season with salt and pepper.
- Add avocado oil to your pot, and cook your chicken on the sautee function until it’s brown on all sides.
- Remove it from the pot and set it aside in a bowl.
- Reduce your heat to low (if possible on your machine) and add your carrot onion and garlic. Cook them all until tender and until the garlic is fragrant.
- Add your butter and flour and stir constantly to keep lumps from forming. do this for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add your chicken back in plus any of the juices that have collected in the bowl you put it in. Then stir the chicken to coat it in the flour and butter roux.
- Add in chicken broth, thyme, bay leaf and cream and turn on the saute function back to high on your pot and let it simmer together for 5 minutes.
- Cover, and pressure cook for 8 minutes on high pressure with a quick release. Make sure to leave the machine on the warming function.
- Make your dumplings while it’s cooking.
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, thyme, garlic powder and cream. Stir until the mixture comes together into one big ball of dough.
- You can pull your dough by hand and measure, or use a small ice cream scoop to form the dough into round balls.
- Place the dumplings into the pot, and cook for 10 minutes on high pressure, or until the dumplings are cooked completely through. As an optional step, you can also air fry the dumplings at 375, for 10 minutes, or until golden.
- Pull out your bay leaves and serve.
Notes
- This will keep for one week in the fridge.
- A side of spinach or broccoli goes nicely with this dish.
- It’s comfort food, so enjoy it!
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Pressure Cooker
- Cuisine: Southern
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 339
- Sugar: 2.2g
- Sodium: 610.1mg
- Fat: 13.8g
- Carbohydrates: 27.8g
- Fiber: 1.7g
- Protein: 25.2g
- Cholesterol: 91.2mg
18 Responses
in the directions for the dumplings it says to add cream with the flour baking powder and seasoning but in the ingredient list there’s no cream listed under dumplings
Thanks for catching that, Heidi! My cooking skills are a little better than my copy/paste ones! The heavy cream was listed under the ingredients in the actual blog post but didn’t make it over to the recipe card. It’s in there for future readers!
Despite that flub, hope you enjoyed these!
This is now my favorite Instant Pot recipe! So comforting and delicious it tastes like it took all day.
This chicken and dumplings was such a hit tonight! I made them in my instant pot and there are barely any leftovers! Thank you for a delicious recipe!
I was so happy when I came across this recipe! Chicken and dumplings were always a childhood favorite of mine, so I had to try making it! This recipe blew me away! Your directions were super easy to follow and resulting in delicious chicken and dumplings! I enjoyed every bite! Thank you for the recipe!
Its so funny because my husband and I were just talking about how we were craving chicken and dumplings. so of course I went to search on Pinterest and ran across your recipe. It was so easy to make an absolutely delicious! Will be making it again soon.
Chicken and dumplings is one of my favorite comfort foods!! And I absolutely love that I was able to make it in my pressure cooker since I’ve been using it a lot more lately to save on time. It turned out great! Thanks for the great recipe!
These chicken and dumplings were amazing and the directions were so helpful. Thank you for sharing!
I only had tasted this once many years ago and as soon as I saw this recipe I was reminded about how delicious it was. I got the ingredients and tried and OMG it was even better than the one I had tried years ago. Will definitely be making it again!
This soup was so rich and creamy I could eat it everyday! The true epitome of comfort food.
I loved this recipe. I had never made chicken and dumplings before it always wanted to and this instant pot version was perfect and so easy to do! Will become part of my winter repertoire for sure. Thank you!
Most divine chicken dumplings i have ever had! The flavor was so balanced and pairs well with all starches!
This was so creamy and delicious! Plus it really kept well in the fridge and we were still able to have it four days later.
#1 I freaking love this recipe. #2 or was so easy to make. You don’t need to pair it with anything. Like you said, all you need is a big ole bowl 🤤
This recipe was totally worth me whipping out my pressure cooker. I made a few allergy-friendly modifications (GF flour/Plant-Based Butter/coconut cream replaces the heavy cream) that changed the flavor of my dish slightly but it was still outstanding. Great recipe!
Jiminey Christmas these chicken and dumplings were amazing. The fact that I was able to make it in the Instant Pot made it even more so! It will definitely be a part of my meal plans.
So this is a recipe I did not know I needed, but wow did I need it! I am a vegetarian and I didn’t have all of the ingredients on hand (garlic cloves, thyme, bay leaf, fresh carrots) or a pressure cooker, but it was really easy to make it work on the stove top with veggie broth as a sub, garlic salt, and some peas and carrots from the can. The dumplings were so easy to make & the tip to add them to the air fryer first is A+. I’m really excited to make this again as it was truly the ultimate comfort food. I’m sure if you have access to everything (or even do simple subs like I did!) it will turn out perfect.
I’m SO glad to hear that it still worked well on a stovetop, and it sounds like you did a great job of improvising! I love what you did with the subs :).