Instant Pot Chicken Gnocchi Soup is a satisfying comfort food dinner made in just 30 minutes. The creamy soup is so nice with the healthy vegetables and the shredded chicken - quick, easy and delicious!
2large carrotscoarsely shredded (about 2 cups, not packed)
1(16-oz) packagepotato gnocchiuncooked
2cupsfresh baby spinach
Instructions
Sauté: Set your instant pot to sauté and melt the butter in it. Add the onion, garlic and celery and cook until softened, about 2-3 minutes. Stir in garlic powder, dried thyme, salt and pepper.
Add chicken: Pour chicken broth into instant pot, scraping any browned bits off the bottom of the pot. Add chicken breasts, making sure they are covered with broth.
Pressure cook: Seal lid and pressure cook on HIGH pressure for 6 minutes (this is for small, 4-oz sized chicken breasts; if yours are closer to 8-oz each, pressure cook for 8-10 minutes). Once time is up, allow pressure to release naturally for 5 minutes, then release any remaining pressure manually.
Shred chicken: Open lid. Remove chicken and shred, then return to soup.
Finish soup: Set instant pot to "sauté". Whisk the cornstarch into the milk, then stir into the soup. Add the carrots and gnocchi and simmer until gnocchi are done (this should only take a couple of minutes). Add spinach and allow to wilt for one minute, then serve.
Video
Notes
Ingredient notes
Milk: I either use whole milk or evaporated milk, because that’s what we always have on hand. I usually don’t want to add 2 cups of expensive heavy cream to a soup, and it makes it too heavy to me. You can use anything you like though! Milk, half-and-half, cream, evaporated milk or a mix of them. Be careful with skim milk though, it splits more easily.
Chicken: Feel free to use boneless, skinless chicken thighs in place of the chicken breast. The soup will need to cook 5 minutes longer with the chicken thighs.
Gnocchi: I use refrigerated gnocchi for this recipe, not frozen. If using frozen, I would recommend to either defrost them first or to cook them separately before adding them to the soup. Otherwise, they need to simmer too long in the soup and the other ingredients will end up overcooked.
Butter: Feel free to use oil in place of the butter if you prefer.
Spinach: I use pre-washed, bagged baby spinach. If you’re using mature spinach, you’ll want to chop off any large stems and then tear or chop the leaves a little. I have also added frozen, defrosted spinach before. It works, just make sure you get leaf spinach and not chopped spinach – chopped spinach turns the soup into a mess.
Recipe tips
The chicken cooks fastest if it’s fully defrosted and the chicken breasts are on the smaller side. But the beauty of an instant pot is that you don’t need a lot of additional cooking time if you just happened to forget to defrost some chicken! Simply add around 5 minutes to the pressure cooking time. Each of my chicken breasts weighed around 4 ounces, so they were definitely thinner/smaller. If your chicken breasts are large (6-8 ounces each), you’ll want to cook the soup for 8-10 minutes and not the 6 minutes the recipe calls for.
Pressure release: Do not skip the natural pressure release, otherwise your chicken will come out too chewy.
Do not overcook the gnocchi: Most ready-made, refrigerated gnocchi varieties cook in 2-3 minutes. Make sure you watch them closely, or they’ll overcook and start disintegrating in the soup.