Chicken Gnocchi Soup

So what am I doing with the gnocchi that is now in my freezer? The night after I made all of the chive gnocchi that is pictured in the post below, we had a big pot of Chicken and Gnocchi Soup. I made the chicken the same day that I made the gnocchi so assembling the soup and getting it on the table was pretty quick.

To make the chicken:

 I started with a whole chicken, put it in my crock put with 2 onions that had been quartered. 4 ribs of celery trimmed and cut into thirds, 2 teaspoons of salt and about the same of pepper, a teaspoon of thyme and enough water that fill the crock pot about 3/4 of the way. I let it cook on low all day. After I got home from work, I pulled the chicken out and separated the meat from the bones. I strained the broth, discarding the veggies because they were pretty much mush. The broth went into the fridge overnight.

To make the soup: 

I pulled the broth out of the fridge and discarded the fat that had congealed on top. The broth went into the soup pot along with about two cups of the chicken, 1 pint of cooked carrots, half a bag of frozen peas and let that simmer for a bit. I had about 1/4 a cup of some onions that had been chopped and sauteed so I added that too. If you wanted you could also add some sliced celery. I will add celery when I am making stock or cooking a chicken or something, but I do not like to eat it in anything. After all of my vegetables were warmed through, I turned up the heat until I had a good boil going. I dropped the frozen gnocchi directly into the boiling soup and let it cook for about five to seven more minutes.


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I often get remarks about how much time it takes to actually cook from scratch. In the case of this meal it only too me minutes to prepare the chicken to cook in the crock pot. My return for separating the chicken: I had enough chicken to make dinner from me and Kip, we both had this soup for lunch the next day, and one extra serving for my lunch. I also had enough chicken to freeze for one more meal, plus enough to make a batch of chicken salad for lunches.

It did take me a while to make the gnocchi, but the recipe made enough for Kip and I to have three meals featuring gnocchi.

The carrots in the soup had been canned in the fall and I knew I would need extra onions when I cooked dinner earlier in the week so I made a little extra so that I only had to cut onions and cook chopped onions once.

Do I spend more time in the kitchen than I used to? Yes I do. I try and make the most of my time though so that when I am pressed for time I do have a time crunch we still have healthy options.