Creamy Italian Sausage Gnocchi Soup

We love gnocchi, they're the perfect carb-filled pillows of joy to be enjoyed in so many different ways! Fried, boiled, thrown in soup, baked - you name it. This sausage gnocchi soup is a flavorful warming soup to whip up in the cooler months. It’s almost a cross between a stew and a soup.

We love all kinds of soup at this time of year, especially a smooth creamy soup like this roasted butternut squash and red pepper soup. BUT this sausage gnocchi soup is where it's at!  Packed with browned Italian sausage meat, veggies and gnocchi and made so, so creamy with a quick cashew cream. If you love creamy, definitely check out our slow cooker chicken corn chowder.

You need this sausage gnocchi soup in your life to fulfil your soup season dreams. It’s just that tasty! We know you’ll love it, so leave us a comment below with a rating letting us know how you got on! Follow the links here to get to where you need.

Gnocchi are called various things in different regions of the world, but we personally associate them with Italian food. They're made of potatoes, flour and eggs, to create a dough that is then rolled out and cut into smaller pieces before being shaped against a fork or gnocchi paddle.

These lovely dumplings can be especially light and delicate if homemade. Often they are served simply with melted butter, sage or other herbs and a variety of sauces. We particularly like a tomato, basil and pancetta sauce with ours!

The best part about gnocchi is that they are so quick to cook and you know they are ready when they float to the surface of the cooking water.

You can quite easily get different gnocchi varieties nowadays that you can pan fry - these are a bit firmer but are fantastic to throw together a quick meal. In this recipe we will be simmering ours in the soup not long before serving. 

Here are some reasons you'll love this Italian sausage gnocchi soup:

One pan - anything that involves less washing up is a winner in our house. A real one pan wonder, this gnocchi soup will brighten up even the toughest days.

Lightened up - coming in at under 500 calories, this soup is a lightened up version using a quick cashew cream to make it super creamy.

Quick - you won't be standing over the stove for hours with this soup, you can be sitting and enjoying it in under 40 minutes.

Warming - cosy and warming, this soup will hit all the right spots during those colder months. Perfect.

Seasonal - using seasonal ingredients you can enjoy a wonderful bowl of flavor this soup season.

Sausage - you’ll need some fresh sausage meat or fresh Italian sausages. Either works well, removing skins takes more effort and a little more time though.

Spices - we love using spices, you’ll need crushed red pepper flakes and fennel seeds to add a lovely flavor to the sausage whilst it’s browning.  

Herbs - you’ll need a few herbs to carry on with that Italian flavour theme: dried thyme and rosemary will be just fine, but if you want to use fresh herbs that’s also good, you’ll just need to use a bit more than directed below. 

Creaminess - you’ll get all your creaminess without cream! You’ll just need cashews and water. That’s it. 

Gnocchi - for this recipe we’ve used pre-made gnocchi as who doesn’t love an easy win? Just don’t mix them up with the ones made for frying!

We know how you all love customizing recipes so here are some recommendations to mix things up:

Change up the protein - we would recommend trying this with either ground chicken or turkey to mix it up. If you wanted to go full-on veggie, you could try a ground soya protein.

Change up the creaminess - you can switch the cashew cream for standard dairy cream if that’s what you have. You can even miss it out completely, maybe just add a touch more broth, but it's not necessary.

Tomatoey - you could add some tomato paste to make it a tomatoey soup instead.

Pulses - If you want to switch some of the veggies out with some canned beans like borlotti or cannellini beans this should also work. We would say that the soup is very filling with the gnocchi though so it may be a bit much. 

Spices - Chilli and fennel are quintessential components in Italian sausage for us. The fennel gives a lovely anise flavor in this soup. If you don’t have any fennel seeds you could substitute for crushed anise seeds or caraway seeds or just leave them out.

For a successful quick, easy and satisfying sausage gnocchi soup make sure to follow these top tips: 

Cashew cream - the first thing you need to do is put the cashews in a bowl of boiling water and leave to soak until later, when you will add ½ cup (120ml) of water to the soaked nuts and blend them with a stick blender until smooth.

No blender - Don’t have a blender? Either omit the cashew cream altogether or buy regular cream (or oat cream to keep it dairy free).

Spices - to release more flavor from the fennel seeds, bash them in a pestle and mortar to release their aromatic oils, or rub them between your fingers to break them up a little. This makes a huge difference and allows their flavor to permeate the soup.

Caramelization - the best thing you can do to develop flavor in this soup is to caramelize. This is done in two stages - the sausage and the veggies used in the base of the soup. Caramelized ingredients really do add a level of umami-ness to the soup, which is what we are looking for!