I remember as a kid growing up in California my grandparents would take my brother and I out to dinner on many occasions. One that sticks out in my mind is Mrs Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knotts Berry Farm. Every time we went I always ordered chicken and dumplings. Thick chunks of chicken and vegetables with big spongy 
dumplings, oh my days. As you can imagine, this isn’t a waist friendly dish. I wrote it off for so long because I figured there was no way for it to be healthy. Oh how was I wrong! In my defence, I never really looked at the ins and outs of the basic recipe before. I know that most have huge carby dumplings and heavy cream which instantly is a no-no. I really had a craving for it a few months ago so I decided to sit down and do my homework. I read over quite a few traditional recipes and created my own.
Not only is this under 500 calories, but it’s also cooked in the slow cooker so you can throw it in and leave it. Easy and comforting? Yes please! I don’t feel like this skips anything, you still get delicious dumplings and plenty of veg and chicken. The recipe itself takes 6 hours to cook and probably about a half hour of prep split between the stages of cooking. I have in the past, however, prepped everything the night before in the slow cooker and left it cooking while I was at work. I would suggest if you do cook it longer, add some more water to ensure it doesn’t dry out while you’re gone.
Slow Cooker Chicken & Dumplings – serves 6
Calories: 409
Fat: 9.4g
Carbs: 35.5
Protein: 43.2
Chicken and Veg Broth
Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
1 tin of sliced carrots
2 stalks of celery
80g frozen peas
100g baby button mushroom
1 medium yellow onion
1.5l chicken stock
2 tablespoon all purpose flour
2 bay leaves
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
Method
Dice all the vegetables and add them to the slow cooker with the chicken. You can either put the chicken breasts in whole and shred later or dice them up now for bite sized pieces – it is completely up to you! I prefer to have the chicken shredded. Add 1 litre of the chicken broth to the slow cooker. Pour the remaining 500ml into a bowl and whisk with the flour to create a thickening liquid. Pour the flour mixture into the slow cooker, turn to low and leave to cook for 5 hours. Resist the urge to stir or smell while it is cooking! Keep it covered and let it cook away.
If you’ve left the chicken breasts whole – after 5 hours, remove the chicken breasts and shred with a fork then add back to the slow cooker.
Dumplings
Ingredients
180ml skimmed milk
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
180g all purpose flour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
dash of black pepper
Method
Add the baking powder, salt and baking powder to a bowl and whisk together. With a fork, mix in oil and milk to the flour mixture until a thick elasticated dough is formed. Drop spoonfuls of the dough on the top of the chicken and veg broth. It’s important not to put the dumplings IN the broth! Turn the slow cooker to high and leave to cook for 1 hour.
Ensure you remove bay leaves before serving. The beauty with this recipe is you can easily make it your own by switching the veg, flour type and seasonings. Enjoy this surrounded by your family and a nice hot cuppa. Let me know if you made this and what you thought!
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