Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi Soup

A couple months ago we ate at Olive Garden since we had a gift card for it. I always choose to get soup and this time I noticed a new one on the menu. Well, actually I don't know how 'new' it is since it's been a long time since we've gone there. But either way, new to me. It sounded good so I tried it. I was happy with the choice because I thought it was really good. And I was even happier when I found a copykat recipe online :) This soup tasted just like how I remember, who knows, maybe my memory isn't that accurate, but it's still really good and i'll be making it again. It's really easy to make, especially since I had chopped everything up in advance and cooked the chicken so when I was ready to make the soup most of the work was already done. We ate this with the rest of the rolls from the last post. Gotta have some kind of bread with soup!

Olive Garden Chicken Gnocchi Soup
from copykat via. Pass The Sushi


Ingredients:
1 cup chicken breasts, diced and cooked, or sub. canned chicken/turkey
4 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 quart half and half (can also use evap­o­rated milk-i did half of each since i didnt have enough half and half)
1 14 ounce can chicken broth
1/2 cup cel­ery, sliced
1/4 cup flour
2 gar­lic cloves, minced
1 cup car­rots, shredded
1 cup onions (1 medium) diced
1 cup fresh spinach, coarsely chopped (kale would also work well)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pep­per to taste
dash ground nutmeg
16 ounce pack­age gnocchi

Directions:
In a large ­pot, saute the onion, cel­ery and gar­lic in the but­ter and olive oil. When the onion is clear, add the flour and form a roux. Stir and cook a minute. Add the half and half.

Mean­while in another pan, cook the gnoc­chi.

Add the car­rots and chicken to the ­pot. Stir often and when it gets thicker, add the chicken broth, gnoc­chi, spinach and sea­son­ings. Cover and heat through.