This Italian Sausage Gnocchi Soup is one of my favorite easy dinners for cozy season! Flavorful Italian sausage, pillowy gnocchi and hearty vegetables come together in a creamy parmesan broth – pure comfort food for the fall and winter months.

The perfect creamy sausage gnocchi soup for chilly days!

I’m so excited for cooler weather and cozy dinner recipes, now that summer is coming to an end. One of the first soups I make every year (apart from my favorite Lasagna Soup) – this Italian Sausage Gnocchi Soup.

I make my version with a hearty dose of onion/celery/carrot, but you can absolutely skip them or only use onion if you prefer. I also use a little less heavy cream than most recipes call for. Mostly because I think with the Italian sausage, the soup is already very rich – but also, cream is quite expensive so we save a little money this way.

The recipe itself is very simple. Brown the sausage with the vegetables, season and add broth to simmer the gnocchi; and then just finish with the cream, spinach and parmesan. Easy peasy!

We like it with some bread on the side. And while our house bread is a favorite, I’d be lying if I said we never serve it with a slice of buttered white bread or a store-bought breadstick!

Overhead view of a soup ladle removing sausage gnocchi soup from a cast iron pot.

Ingredients I like to use

Here is a visual overview of the ingredients in the recipe. Scroll down to the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post for quantities!

Ingredients for Sausage Gnocchi Soup with text labels.

(Excuse the kitchen decor in the back of the pic, I only realized how distracting it looks once I took a look at the photos after the fact!)

Gnocchi: I like to use refrigerated gnocchi because they are faster to cook, but shelf-stable work just fine. Just simmer them for a little longer.
Vegetables: Feel free to skip, use just one kind, or go for a frozen or prepared mirepoix mix – whatever works best for your family! Sometimes I add sliced mushrooms if I have a package hanging out in the fridge, works very well in this recipe!
Baby spinach: Skip if your kids revolt against green stuff (mine definitely do, but I make them pick out the spinach. Sometimes I’m an extra-nice mom and remove some soup for them before I add the spinach.)
Italian sausage: If you have some ground beef to use up, works just fine here. Just go heavy handed on the seasoning!
Heavy cream: I usually go for ⅔ to 1 cup when I make this recipe, which is plenty rich for us. Feel free to add more if you prefer. I do not recommend using milk in place of the cream, but evaporated milk or half-and-half work. Just make absolutely sure not to boil the soup after adding them!

Let’s cook some soup!

1 Sauté the vegetables and brown the sausage:

We start this recipe by sautéing our vegetables until softened – this gives the best flavor! Then, we add the sausage, break it up as it cooks and give it time until it’s nicely browned.

I like to keep the heat around medium-high for this step, especially when I add the sausage to get some color on it.

Sautéed vegetables and browned Italian sausage in a cast iron pot.

2 Add seasoning and broth:

Once the sausage is nicely browned, add all of your seasoning. I use Italian seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper – go easy on the salt at this point because the broth will also add saltiness.

We also add our tomato paste now, so it can get lightly roasted along with the herbs and spices. Just makes everything more flavorful!

Then, stir in the broth and scrape any browned bits off the bottom of the pot – all the flavor sits there!

Seasoned vegetables and Italian sausage in a cast iron pot.

3 Simmer soup:

First we’re going to bring the soup to a boil, add the gnocchi and cook them at a vigorous simmer for 2 minutes (or for however many minutes your package says – if you use shelf-stable gnocchi, they will take a little longer).

Finally, we add all the remaining ingredients over very low heat – before you add the cream, whisk a tablespoon of cornstarch into it, it makes the soup extra-thick and creamy without having to add more cream; AND it helps the cream to stay stable so it’s less likely to split.

Throw in your chopped baby spinach as well, and the grated parmesan. At this point, you do not want to boil the soup anymore. Keep it at a gentle simmer so the cornstarch can work and everything can heat through, but do not boil. Just simmer very gently for 5-8 minutes.

Sausage gnocchi soup simmering in cast iron pot.

4 Finish and serve:

And that’s it! All you have to do is check the soup for seasoning, adjust to your taste and serve.

I will say that to me, this soup tastes absolutely best eaten hot, so I always try to get it on the table ASAP once it’s done. It will also thicken a lot as it cools, just FYI.

Leftovers

There are different opinions on storing and reheating spinach. Personally, I’m fine with reheating the soup once with the spinach added, and I always refrigerate any leftovers quickly, for up to 1 day (longer than that and the gnocchi will soak up too much liquid.)

Do what you are comfortable with. If you don’t like to reheat spinach and know you will likely have leftovers, just remove some of the soup before you add the spinach and store it in the fridge separately.

Top tips from my kitchen

I like to dice the vegetables on the smaller side. I’m not a big fan of having huge chunks of onion in my soup, and I appreciate when my soup is easy to eat 😉 If you have a vegetable chopper, it’s very quick and easy – but with a knife, it doesn’t take ages either.
Simmer the gnocchi before adding the rest of the ingredients. The gnocchi need the vigorous simmer/boil to cook through. So, make sure to add them separately and cook them for the amount of time the package states to cook them through; and DO NOT the cream, spinach and cheese with them.
Really do not boil the soup after adding the cream! The cream may split and curdle when it is heated up too much/too fast, so please do stick to a gentle simmer after adding the cream. It really is enough to heat through the soup, activate the cornstarch and cook the spinach!

Side dishes for this soup

The thing I love most about soup? It’s usually a full meal, cooked in a single pot, nothing else needed. However, it’s nice to add a little something extra 😉 here are our favorites: