Chicken Gnocchi Soup with Spinach and Carrots
A creamy chicken gnocchi soup with carrots, celery and spinach, ready in forty minutes. Shop-bought gnocchi goes in at the very end so it stays tender.
Chicken gnocchi soup is the one dish people order again and again at Italian-American chain restaurants, and it is far easier to make at home than the menu suggests. A base of onion, carrot and celery softens in butter, chicken stock goes in, and cooked chicken turns it into a meal. Cream is stirred through off the boil, shop-bought gnocchi cooks in the pot for three minutes, and a handful of spinach wilts into the broth at the last second. Forty minutes from the first onion to six bowls on the table. Nothing here needs a technique you have not already used.
| Prep Time | 15 | Cook Time | 25 |
| Servings | 6 | Calories | 485 kcal |
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 30 g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped (about 150 g / 5 oz)
- 2 medium carrots, diced small (about 160 g / 5.5 oz)
- 2 celery sticks, diced small (about 100 g / 3.5 oz)
- 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 25 g (3 tablespoons) plain flour
- 1.2 litres (5 cups) chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 0.5 teaspoon dried oregano
- 450 g (1 lb) cooked chicken, shredded or diced
- 250 ml (1 cup) double cream (heavy cream)
- 500 g (1 lb) shop-bought potato gnocchi
- 80 g (3 packed cups) fresh baby spinach
- 0.25 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- Salt and black pepper, to taste
Almost everything here is a store cupboard item or a leftover. The cooked chicken can come from a roast, a poached breast or a supermarket rotisserie bird, and the gnocchi are the vacuum-packed shelf-stable kind sold beside the dried pasta. Buying them rather than making them is what turns this from a weekend project into a weeknight dinner.
Dice the carrot and celery smaller than you think you need to, around 5 mm. They have only 8 minutes in the pot before the stock goes in, and large pieces will still be hard when the soup is otherwise finished.
Essential Kitchen Tools
| Heavy pot (4 to 5 litres) | Even heat, so the cream never catches on the base |
| Wooden spoon | Stirring the roux and scraping the corners of the pot |
| Sharp knife and board | Dicing the vegetables small and evenly |
| Ladle | Adding the stock gradually and serving |
| Slotted spoon | Lifting a gnocchi out to check it is hot through |
A thin pan will work, but it needs watching: cream and flour scorch on a thin base long before you smell it.
Why This Recipe Works
The soup is built on a roux, which is simply flour cooked in fat. Two minutes of stirring is enough to drive off the raw, pasty flavour, and the coated flour then disperses smoothly into the stock. That single step is what gives the soup body without needing a litre of cream to do the job, and it is why the finished broth clings to the gnocchi instead of running off them.
The vegetables are not background. Onion, carrot and celery softened slowly in butter is the base of most Italian soups for a reason: the onion turns sweet, the carrot adds a quiet sugar, and the celery provides the savoury note that stops the whole thing tasting flat under all that cream.
Cream goes in late and off the boil. Dairy proteins hold together up to about 85 degrees Celsius and begin to break apart above it, which is the entire explanation for every curdled cream soup. Keeping the pot below a simmer from the moment the cream is added costs nothing and guarantees a smooth result.
And the gnocchi are last for a reason worth spelling out. Shop-bought gnocchi are fully cooked potato dumplings; they are being reheated, not boiled. Three to four minutes brings them to the surface and to temperature. Beyond that they behave like a sponge, pulling liquid out of the soup, swelling, and eventually splitting into starchy fragments that cloud the broth and thicken it into porridge. Adding them early also releases their surface starch into the soup over a long cook, which is the other way this dish goes from creamy to gluey.
Pro Tips for Better Results
Add the stock gradually at first. Two small additions stirred smooth will prevent every lump. Dumping the whole 1.2 litres onto a hot roux is how you end up straining the soup.
Let the cream come to room temperature. Cold cream poured into a hot pot shocks the emulsion and is the most common cause of splitting in an otherwise careful cook’s kitchen.
Do not boil after the cream goes in. If you see more than the occasional lazy bubble, pull the pot off the heat for a minute.
Cook the gnocchi in the soup, not separately. They release just enough starch in three minutes to help the broth cling, and they take on the flavour of the stock.
Add the spinach off the heat. One minute in a hot pot is all it needs, and the leaves stay bright rather than turning grey and bitter.
Season at the very end. Chicken stock ranges from barely salted to extremely salty, and the cream and gnocchi both mute what is already there.
Grate the nutmeg fresh if you can. It is the note that makes people ask what is in the soup, and pre-ground nutmeg loses it within months.
Nutrition Facts (per serving)
| Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat | Fiber |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 485 kcal | 28g | 38g | 25g | 3g |
Figures are for one of six bowls, with no bread on the side. Replacing the double cream with whole milk brings it to around 390 kcal per serving, with a thinner broth.