Creamy One-Pan Chicken Gnocchi
Gnocchi is a lean bulker's cheat code: dense, fast and it drinks sauce. Add seared chicken and a restrained parmesan cream and you get 810 kcal that tastes like a restaurant plate.
You need
- 1 large pan with a lid
- 1 wooden spoon
- 1 sharp knife
Ingredients
For 2 servings
- 320 g (11 oz) chicken breast, cut in bite-size pieces
- 400 g (14 oz) shelf-stable potato gnocchi
- 160 ml (2/3 cup) cooking cream (15% fat)
- 30 g (1/3 cup) parmesan, grated
- 120 g (4 cups) fresh spinach
- 160 g (1 cup) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 150 ml (2/3 cup) chicken stock
- 2 tsp olive oil
- to taste salt + black pepper + chili flakes
How to cook
Pat the chicken dry, season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil over medium-high and sear the pieces 5 to 6 minutes until golden on two sides. Remove to a plate.
Golden means flavor for the sauce later. Pale chicken makes pale sauce.
Same pan: add the garlic and cherry tomatoes. Cook 2 minutes until the tomatoes start to slump and the garlic smells sweet.
Add the gnocchi straight from the pack plus the stock. Stir, lid on, 3 minutes. The gnocchi steam-cook right in the pan.
No separate pot of boiling water. The starch they release is what thickens the sauce.
Lid off. Add the cream and parmesan, stir until the sauce coats the gnocchi, about 2 minutes.
Return the chicken with its juices. Fold in the spinach until it wilts.
Taste. Salt, black pepper, chili flakes if you want heat. Serve straight from the pan.
Why it fits a build muscle goal
- 54 g protein per serving. 160 g of chicken breast each does most of it, parmesan tops it up.
- 810 kcal with the cream kept at 15% fat. Rich enough to feel like a reward, controlled enough to stay a lean bulk, not a dirty one.
- Gnocchi is denser than pasta per bite, so the surplus fits on one normal-looking plate instead of a mountain.
Cooking guides
Pann is your AI cooking assistant: tell it what you've got and it builds the meal around it, quietly sized to your build muscle goal. No food database, no log spiral.