Everyone Loves This Chicken Gnocchi Soup!

It is frightening cold out there which means we need comfort, we need warmth, we need something rich that's going to keep us warm and cozy because it is cozy season after all and we are making a classic favorite, we're making chicken and gnocchi soup, I know you know it, I know it, we all love it, it's such a favorite amongst so many people and I haven't shared this recipe with you in years and years and years and I feel like it's time to bring it back out, it's time to make it bigger and better and it is just sensationally delicious and I cannot wait to share it with you. So the first thing I'm actually going to work on is something that you can totally skip but because I'm all about sharing with you what's true and authentic and trying to help you save a buck here and there when you can, I'm going to show you the step. I found some fantastically beautiful chicken thighs at a great deal this week so I just went ahead and grabbed some of those, that's what I'm going to start my actual soup with here, I'm going to make a simple, actually like barely anything to it, chicken stock that's going to add so much richness to this soup, it's fantastic. I've got my soup pot here with some water, just filled with water, and I've got three chicken thighs bone-in and skin-on and I'm going to add all three of these bone-in and skin-on right to my hot water and I'm just going to go ahead and cook that for probably I would say a good 40 to 45 minutes, I want that chicken to release its fat because I love a really good rich fatty broth and the chicken to actually cook itself so that we can then shred it and add it back to our soup, so while that happens because it's going to take a while, I'm going to go ahead and get my classic mirepoix for my soup base so you need your onion, your carrots, your celery and get that diced so that we can move on to the next step. While the chicken stock is just about finished, the chicken's almost ready to come out, I'm going to work on the veggie portion, now remember we're doing this backwards so if you're not boiling your chicken from the off, from the very beginning, you're going to do this part first and then you're going to build onto it with your chicken stock and cooked chicken and things like that, but I want to saute my veggies really quickly so I've got a large skillet, to that we're adding the holy trinity of soup veg, we've got onion, carrots, celery, a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, I'm going to give them a little pinch of salt and just get them cooking for maybe about I don't know five to seven minutes or so, you want these to soften and develop a little bit of flavor and begin to cook down. Those look great, I'm going to add some flour, this is going to be like your roux, sort of, it's not technically a real roux because we're not doing equal parts fat to flour but basically it's your thickening agent that's going to thicken your soup, you want about a quarter cup or so, I tend to sometimes do it gradually so that there's no parts that burn before I have a chance to mix it all in if there's not enough fat but this is good. Now I'm just going to take this mixture, bear with me for a second because I'm going to temporarily move this over here, move my stock which has reduced quite a bit which is a good thing, look at the color of that and all that was in there was some chicken stock, was some chicken, that's it. Put that right in, good bit of heavy cream, Italian seasoning, if you wanted to you could just add water and bouillon powder, that would be fine but essentially we just made a really lovely simple chicken stock, tastes so good, I've already tasted it even though there was nothing in there. And now I'm just going to go ahead and bring this to a boil and just let it simmer like ten minutes or so and in that meantime what I'm going to do is I'm going to shred my chicken because remember it was on the bone, I did remove the skin already, I'll shred my chicken, I'll get my baby spinach ready, I'll get the gnocchi out, and then we're like this close to finishing this up. Season your soup very well, plenty of salt, plenty of pepper, my pepper mill, the top just came undone, there we go. Adding the chicken back in, remember we took it off the bone, shredded it up, goes back into the pool. Now, you're going to add your gnocchi directly into this broth, I'm just waiting for it to come back up to a boil, we are using store-bought, listen, you can make your own, okay? I'm not going to. Not for this. If I'm talking a sundae with a fresh or I should say a long cooked delicious meat sauce, I'd be making home a gnocchi, but for a soup, especially a soup that's kind of simple and on the quicker side, I'm using store-bought. Potato gnocchi are key, I like the ones that are vacuum sealed in the pasta aisle, I don't love the ones that are in the fresh aisle because I feel like they become very gummy very fast and that's never a good look, so I'm going to go ahead and add them directly in now that it's back up to a boil. And these just cook for maybe like five minutes or so and once everything gets cooked and thick and delicious, we're going to stir in some fresh baby spinach at the very end, like literally the last thirty seconds, I'll show you what that looks like when it's there and then it's serve up time. Gnocchi is ready, I'm actually going to turn it off, add in my baby spinach and just let the residual heat do its job, okay? My baby spinach is washed and dried but sometimes the tails, what's it called? The stems, the tails, they're a little bit big, a little woodsy, so I just try to take them off when I see that. And I'm just going to let this sit for like five minutes, I think it's really important that you let your soup sit for a few minutes so that all the flavors can really sort of marry and settle because it's boiling hot and then we'll give it a taste. I'm going to get some parmigiano and then it's eating time. You know that's going to be sensational. Listen, not a soup I grew up with and I'm pretty sure that if I made this soup to my nonna, she, you know what I'm saying? But it is loved by so many. It is such a classic in this American beautiful world. We are all limited, I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I'm very cold, okay? Do you know what it was like this morning outside? Four degrees, four, that's a singular digit, okay? Froze. The wind was just out of control and I was like, you know what we need? We need a big bowl of soup. It's so good though, it really is. The chicken's tender, the gnocchi are like little dumplings, think of them as like little dumplings in your soup. Think of it like chicken and dumplings but a little bit different. Think of that avenue, okay? Because that's what it's like. It's delicious. So thelarianthekitchen.com for the written recipe. So let me just spend time with me. Please make this. You deserve it. I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.