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This Chicken Gnocchi Soup recipe is perfect for a quick weeknight dinner! If you love the Olive Garden chicken gnocchi soup, you have to try this – an excellent copycat recipe that’s so rich and creamy. Our homemade version is loaded with tender chunks of chicken and extra pillowy soft potato dumplings!
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Warm, cozy, and positively loaded with gnocchi!
I don’t care if it’s not cool to admit. I LIKE Olive Garden.
People love to hate on Olive Garden and I guess I get it. It’s not at all authentic Italian food and I’m sure a lot of it comes mass produced and just warmed up at the restaurant.
But I don’t care. It’s tasty stuff and I especially love the Chicken Gnocchi Soup. It’s so creamy and has such a nice depth of flavor. My only complaint? There is never enough gnocchi!
Our copycat chicken gnocchi soup recipe tastes just like Olive Garden’s version…but it has the right amount of gnocchi in it. We don’t skimp. After all, the little pillowy bites of gnocchi are the best part!
Serve this with a side salad and fettuccine tossed in our homemade Alfredo sauce to bring the whole OG experience home.
What Is Gnocchi?
Gnocchi is a type of pasta that is made with potatoes as well as flour and eggs. Potato gnocchi are shaped into what are basically small dumplings, and they have a soft and chewy texture.
For this recipe I’m keeping things simple and sticking to a store bought potato gnocchi. Feel free to prepare your own homemade gnocchi if that’s your thing.
You can serve gnocchi just like you would any other pasta with sauce or in this case in a soup!
Chicken Gnocchi Soup Ingredients:
Cooked Shredded Chicken – Use leftovers from my Instant Pot Whole Chicken or make a bunch ahead of time with my easy crockpot shredded chicken!
Potato Gnocchi – We use store bought but you can make your own if you’re feeling ambitious! I used dried gnocchi but you can often find fresh gnocchi in the store too. When the gnocchi floats it is done!
Spinach – Adding some freshly chopped spinach to the chicken gnocchi soup will give it a nice healthy boost! Kale would also work well here.
Carrots, Celery, & Onion – A must in most soup recipes!
Heavy Cream & Milk – Adding these will give it the thick, rich, and creamy consistency that makes chicken gnocchi soup such a popular soup recipe!
Chicken Broth – We recommend a good quality broth or stock for this soup.
Make it Vegetarian:
We’ve made this into an easy vegetarian meal by swapping shredded chicken for shredded chick’n, often found in the vegan section of your grocery store. It’s not my favorite meat replacement on it’s own, but it’s great in soup and my family doesn’t even notice a difference. We like this brand. You’ll want a vegetarian chicken flavored broth as well.
How To Make Chicken Gnocchi Soup:
Sauté: Grab your large soup pot and heat up your olive oil along with onions and celery. Stir this while cooking it for two minutes. Stir in the garlic for 30 seconds.
Flour: Sprinkle in flour to the pot and whisk for a minute.
Cream & Broth: Now whisk in the milk, heavy cream, and chicken broth. Whisk this for around 5 minutes.
Chicken & Veggies: Add in your chicken, spinach, carrots, thyme, gnocchi, salt, and pepper then stir.
Simmer: Let this simmer for 10 minutes after which the carrots and gnocchi should be tender. Serving suggestions below!
Serving Gnocchi Soup:
Now that you can buy Olive Garden salad dressing by the bottle, I usually serve this soup with a side salad. Lots of fresh tomatoes, olives, red onions, and crisp lettuce, plus the OG salad dressing. Divine!
This also goes great with my creamy onion garlic bread. It’s literally the best garlic bread in the world, in my humble opinion. 😉
Frozen air fryer breadsticks are also a quick and easy option that goes well with any good soup recipe!
If you make this chicken gnocchi soup recipe, I hope you’ll let me know what you think! I’m always anxious to hear how you guys like my recipes.
Chicken Gnocchi Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup onion diced
- 1/2 cup celery diced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup milk
- 1 1/2 cups cooked shredded chicken
- 1 1/2 cup fresh spinach leaves chopped
- 16 ounce package potato gnocchi
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.
- Add the onions and celery and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.
- Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds.
- Sprinkle the flour into the pot and whisk for 1 minute.
- Whisk in the chicken broth, cream, and milk. Bring to a simmer, whisking constantly, until soup has thickened slightly, about 5 minutes.
- Add the chicken, spinach, gnocchi, carrots, thyme, salt, and pepper and stir.
- Continue simmering for 10 minutes or until gnocchi and carrots are tender and cooked through.
- Serve immediately.
Tips & Notes:
Nutrition Information:
This recipe was originally published in February 2018. It was updated in February 2021.
Elena says
This soup comes together so fast! Delicious, filling and the family loves it 🙂
I’ve successfully made it with gluten free flour, too. We use gfJules GF flours with great success with many of your recipes.
Thank you, Karly, for the awesome recipes!
Karly Campbell says
Oh, thank you for letting everyone know that it works with GF flour! Glad to hear that! 🙂
Ed Sturzen says
This is so incredibly tasteyful
Love it. It’s a must eat recipe
One of best ever
Karly says
Thanks, Ed!
Mobasir Hassan says
Juicy chicken in creamy broth with some tender pieces of gnocchi is awesome and I must try and taste your recipe tonight with my family. Thank you for such great recipe.
Punam Paul says
It looks and sounds absolutely delicious. ! I love your recipes; keep posting such amazing recipes! It adds flavors in our Kitchen.
Miraya says
If you decide to make your own gnocchi some day, I love King Arthur Flour’s gnocchi recipe that they pair with their parsley pesto, (it’s truly the same made with potato flakes which cuts down on prep time immensely). Homemade gnocchi make a mess of flour, but are fun to make with kiddos (the correct size to roll/cut them is the same diameter and about a third the length of the thumb that will be rolling them on the back of a fork/gnocchi board). My kiddo’s become an expert at rolling out snakes of dough, so I sprung for a gnocchi board. They’re are around $10 at fancy cooking utensil stores, and while an obviously ridiculous single use tool, they’re totally worth it if you like gnocchi and have room. It’s so much faster & less frustrating to use a board than the back of a fork. Homemade is significantly tasty-er than what you can buy, and they freeze very well if spread out on a floured baking sheet for the initial freeze before being stored in a freezer bag. They cook quickly in water, float a minute or two before being done. I’m pretty sure Olive Garden uses the pre-packaged kind of gnocchi though, like what I find at Trader Joe’s. I really like the soup you’re copying too, except that you’ve solved the issue of theirs having very few “goods” vs liquid. How do you think they get their silky soup texture? More broth (& extra flour to thicken it)?
Kristina says
Would frozen gnocchi be acceptable or should it be fresh?
Karly says
I’ve never used frozen gnocchi, but I think it would work just fine.
Lanette says
Sounds super delicious. Are the nutrition facts for the whole recipe of per serving?
Karly says
The nutrition facts are per serving. 🙂
Emily says
Hello, Karly! I am making this recipe right now! I just noticed that you did not mention when to put in the garlic, unless I totally missed it. I threw it in with the first veggies and everything seems ok 🙂 Can’t wait to try this!
Karly says
Whoops, totally missed that! Updated now – and yes, you added it correctly. 🙂
Blair says
I’ve never had the Olive Garden version, but this soup looks incredible. Gnocchi is totally underrated. I often forget about it (and just serve pasta instead), but I recently used it in a dish that turned out so well. This is another great gnocchi option!
Josie Burt says
that one is totally to die for.