Since that fiasco, I had been thinking that surely I couldn't do worse at making chicken and dumpling soup from scratch. That was the plan when I set out and started boiling a chicken. I boiled the chicken and let it cool, and then assigned my son Conner to pick the meat from the bones while my hubby and I were on a date last week. To quote Conner "ew, gross!". I told him to deal with it, he's a boy after all, and how does he think chicken gets into our soups? A real teaching moment.
K, so the chicken sat in the broth for a couple more days in the fridge before I got around to using it. I kept rolling ideas around in my head and deciding exactly what kind of chicken soup I wanted to add my dumplings to. Nothing really jumped out at me, so I kept thinking and looking online for recipes.
My husband loves the gnocchi soup at Olive Garden, and I've been thinking for some time about trying my hand at making gnocchi from scratch. You can see where this is going.... I was pondering the soup, and the gnocchi idea just kept nagging at me. Soooo....of course I had to make chicken gnocchi soup, and pitch the dumpling idea altogether this time around. Gnocchi are really little dumplings anyway, right?
If you have never tasted fresh made gnocchi, you are so in for a treat should you try your hand at this! I have never in my life tasted such tender, delicious little pillows of perfection. This soup was so good that my family fought over the leftovers and begged me to try making gnocchi chicken Alfredo and substituting gnocchi for spaghetti with my spaghetti sauce. It really was not all that time consuming, really, no...really! I spent probably 2 hours total in the kitchen from start to finish, and keep in mind I was a beginner, never making this before. I have never been that big of a fan of gnocchi until I tried these!
For the uninitiated, gnocchi are little pillows of pasta made mostly from potato, with a little flour to bind the potato together (as to not crumble while cooking) and, in the case of my gnocchi, also an egg. I found a gnocchi recipe on this blog, which frankly scared me silly after reading this:
- "Gnocchi recipes aren't for the faint of heart. Many, many things can go awry. I'm not trying to scare you off or dissuade you, I just want you to know what you are in for. Gnocchi-making takes practice, patience, and persistance. At their best potato gnocchi can be light and delicate. At their worst, dense, rubbery, and/or soggy. The very worst are the gnocchi that come apart in the boiling water before they even reach your plate."
I am lucky enough to have a potato ricer. I've actually been lucky enough to have stored one for years, having been told once by Martha Stewart on some cooking show that every cook worth anything should own a ricer. I didn't want to be ashamed should Martha come knocking, so I dutifully purchased a ricer only to continue mashing my potatoes the old fashioned way....by getting a man to do it!
Who knew, that some day I would decide to make gnocchi and that a ricer would indeed become very handy. You see, when making gnocchi pasta, it is very important that your mashed potatoes have no lumps, and a ricer is perfect for that. The blogger I got the recipe from uses a couple of forks to mash her potatoes, but trust me, a ricer is not expensive, and a huge time saver on the potato mashing step of the recipe.
I won't go into the gnocchi recipe details here because she does a fabulous job on her blog and you can pop over there to read all about it.
So, in spite of being skeptical of the outcome, once my potatoes were cooked, I continued with my gnocchi adventure. Below you can see a photo of my completed pasta. It was not all that hard, at least not for me. I am an experienced cook, and have made pasta a few times, and bread about a zillion times...give or take a few.
Here is a photo of the finished pasta after boiling. I was so surprised at how quickly they cooked. The blogger said that when they pop to the surface, they are done, then wait 10 seconds and remove them from the boiling water. They seriously popped up in only about 30 seconds. I was not prepared for that, but I was pleasantly surprised. I just couldn't believe that they could be done already!
I wanted to make a simple soup, simple in ingredients, and simple in taste to allow the flavor and texture of the gnocchi to become the focus of the dish. I ran through my herbs in my head and just couldn't come up with a suitable flavor that I wanted to add to the soup, so rather than make a seasoning error, I allowed the celery, onion, garlic, and carrots along with salt and pepper to flavor the soup.
I started the potatoes cooking for the gnocchi, and while they cooked and then cooled (see gnocchi recipe), I worked on the chicken soup.
Heidi's Chicken Gnocchi Soup
- 1 chicken, whole, cleaned, covered with water, and boiled until tender and coming off of bones.
- 8 cups reserved chicken broth from boiling chicken
- 3 cans evaporated milk
- Olive oil
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 onion, diced
- 6 stalks celery, diced
- 6 large carrots, peeled and grated
- Salt & pepper to taste
- Corn starch for thickening
To make the soup, cut the chicken meat into smaller chunks, and reserve 8 cups broth in a measuring cup. Add the garlic, onion, celery, and carrots to the cooking pot and drizzle with olive oil. Simmer the veggies until tender and add back in the broth and chicken. Add the evaporated milk and bring the soup to a simmer and allow to cook while you continue with the gnocchi making.
Once I reached the point that my gnocchi were ready to boil, I thickened my soup with a corn starch and water roux. I probably used 1/4 cup of corn starch and just enough water to make it liquid. You can add more or less, depending on how thick you want your soup. I wanted it creamy and thickened, but not too thick. It was more runny than a typical clam chowder. Once the soup was thickened, I turned it off and began boiling the gnocchi. As each batch of gnocchi finished, I just transferred them straight into the soup.
It was as easy at that, and our soup was ready to eat. Below you can see the finished product....mmmm....still makes my mouth water thinking of it!
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