Gnocchi is one of our very, very favorite Italian treats. These little potato dumplings, shaped like pillows with ridges to catch the sauce — they're quite simple to make, and absolutely delicious to eat. Here's a quick tutorial for making gnocchi at home.
This recipe will make about 12 cups of gnocchi, enough to feed 6 to 8 people.
What You Need
Ingredients
3 pounds all-purpose potatoes
1 egg
2 teaspoons salt
1 to 2 cups flour
Equipment
Large saucepan
Potato ricer or food mill (optional)
Bowl
Surface for kneading
Instructions
1. Fill the saucepan with water, and stir in 1 tablespoon salt. Add the potatoes. Boil the potatoes, in their skins, until they are nearly falling apart.
2. Drain the potatoes and let them cool just until they can be handled (about 5 to 10 minutes).
3. Use a towel, a paper towel, or a spoon to rub or scrape the skin off the potatoes.
4. Now rice or mash the potatoes as finely as you can into a large bowl. We did not have a ricer or a food mill, and so we simply mashed the potatoes with a masher and a fork. This left some rather large lumps, and we realized afterwards that we could have pressed the potatoes through a colander. (It's OK, though, if your potatoes aren't perfectly fine; you'll end up with a more rustic, lumpy dough, but they'll still be delicious.)
5. Stir the salt and egg into the mashed potatoes.
6. Spread the flour out on a kneading surface and turn the potato mixture out on top. Knead it together with your hands, adding more flour as you go, if necessary.
7. Depending on how much moisture was in your potatoes, you may need to add up to a cup of flour.
8. There is a lot of variability in potatoes, so simply add until the dough feels mostly smooth, and just slightly sticky.
9. Cut the dough into quarters, and then divide each quarter into four pieces. Roll each piece into a long, 1-inch-wide rope.
10. Cut the rope into walnut-sized pillows. You can leave the pieces as is, or you can roll them over the back of a fork to create ridges.
11. To form the ridges on the gnocchi, take a bite-sized pillow of dough, and roll it down and off the tines of a fork. Don't worry if they look lumpy or rustic! These are not meant to look perfectly shaped; they are usually a little uneven (at least, ours always are). Place the finished gnocchi on a baking pan dusted with flour, and sprinkle a little flour over top.
12. To cook the gnocchi, heat a saucepan of salted water to boiling. Add the gnocchi and cook. They will float to the top of the pan as they cook. Cook for about 2 minutes after they float to the top. (About 4 minutes cooking time total, depending on their size.)
Additional Notes:
• Ricotta gnocchi are a good variation to try. Also try this recipe for goat cheese and chive gnocchi.
• The difference between gnocchi di patate, gnocchi alla romana, and gnocchi Parisienne.
• To freeze gnocchi, freeze them solid on a sheet pan. Then pour them into a container or a bag. They will keep for at least 2 weeks in the freezer, but we have frozen them for much longer than that. To cook, dump the frozen gnocchi in boiling water and cook them as directed above. It will simply take a few extra minutes.
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(Images: Faith Durand)
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Uhg. I love gnocchi and have made it on a few occasions and I have to say it is the most putzy, messy, and time consuming things I've ever made. And I don't think it really tasted much better than the high quality stuff you can buy at the store. If you've never made it, call a friend over and give it a shot but if you're like me you're probably just buy the pre-made stuff after that!
Oh, please don't buy the premade stuff, laurabellk! Homemade is so easy. Keys for me are a potato ricer (regular masher won't get it even) more egg than this recipe says.
Gnocchi ala Sorrentina. Ohhh baby!
Just make up a good tomato sauce and buy the best fresh mozzarella you can, chop it into chunks and toss both with the gnocchi. Pour it into a casserole dish and bake! Holy smokes is it good.
I just made gnocchi last week!! You know what I love to do? I like to give 'em a good sear in a frying pan before serving. Gets 'em all crispy; it's so good!!!
I've done Italian (potato) gnocchi and Parisian (pate choux) gnocchi and let me tell you, the latter is way easier and almost fool proof. The former was a huge mess, very time consuming, and for me, not worth it. I also should admit that mine broke apart when I drained them. Entirely my fault - I wanted to use as little flour as possible and I used a colander to drain rather than a spider. Anyway, I am going to try the ricotta method this week and suspect it'll be a good middle ground. If it's your first time making gnocchi, I would choose either of the latter two methods over the potato one.
Can you be a little more specific than "all purpose potato?" Those look like russet potatoes to me.
@NSane, Emma and I used local russet potatoes - I am not sure of the variety. One recipe we consulted said "Idaho" potatoes; another (a culinary school textbook) said "all-purpose potatoes."
Overall, I think that the key to gnocchi (and a lot of pasta) is just not taking it too seriously. Work the dough until it's easy to handle -- don't worry about them being "light as air" or whatever. They'll be delicious no matter what. Also, we weren't able to mash our potatoes very fine; the resulting gnocchi had some recognizable bits of potato in them, which actually turned out to be delicious.
So, while it's definitely a multi-step project, a recipe like this makes so much, and they're so easy to freeze, that personally I find it worth it to make them occasionally in my own "rustic" way. But YMMV, of course! :)
I was so inspired that I made this tonight. It was fabulous!
I like to put some nuts in my gnocchi and roll them thin. I put them in the freezer for a bit and then make pasta salad with them. LOVE IT!
the procedure is all wrong. you need to bake the potatoes, pricking the skins with a fork beforehand. the more dry the potatoes are when cooked, the better your gnocchi will be.
bake them, let them cool a bit, and cut them in half and scoop out the innards and then rice them.
and jmorri26 was right about more egg.
@crunchygran0la thanks for the feedback. I have made gnocchi with baked and with boiled potatoes, and honestly I have never noticed an appreciable difference. Also, this was the method Emma was taught in culinary school, so we decided to go with it. What sort of difference in the texture have you noticed with baked potatoes -- how is the dough?
Also, personally, I like as little egg flavor as possible in gnocchi (and in many other dumplings - spatzle, for instance). So, again, while there are certainly alternate methods for making these, this particular dough holds together well, and the results were delicious. Substantial, yet light, with just the right amount of chewiness and fluffiness.
Definitely glad to hear other tips and thoughts on recipes, too -- gnocchi inspire passion among those of us who love them! :) So keep 'em coming.
I've never had gnocchi and would like to try it. I'll add this recipe to the others I have collected.
For whatever reason I've really struggled with gnocchi (which hasn't stopped me from persisting in my attempts!). I find that when I try to roll out the gnocchi into strips, it'll come apart or just behave weirdly and not cooperate. And as often as not, the first few will disintegrate in the water when I put them in...which is probably I sign I did something wrong somewhere. (But sometimes they won't disintegrate, and I don't think I did anything different! Frustrating!)
I, too, love them sauteed in a pan. Do a quick boil, drain, and then toss in a pan with browned butter and sage. YUM.
Once I made them in a casserole with some italian sausage and spinach. I added a bit of a creamy tomato sauce (just a quick improvised thing) and baked it all for 15-20 minutes. It was plate-licking good.
Here's some ideas from my many gnocchi recipies that will make them more fluffy & less dense:
1) Use non-waxy potatoes
2) Use 'old potatoes' (literally store them in darkness for a few weeks)
3) use no egg, or minimal egg
5) use minimal flour
5) bake the potatoes
6) steam the potatoes
7) use potatoes all the same size
8) cook them sous-vide (must cut them down first so they heat through very quickly, otherwise they will become crunchy, as described by Harold McGee).
9) If you boil them in water until they are nearly falling apart, they are waaaay too waterlogged. Once thy're soft enough to go through the ricer they're good to go.
10) Use a potato ricer or a mule (food mill) because they work the potato less and incorporate more air.
11) work/knead the potato as little as possible. Kneading quickly makes them dense.
12) knead the potato/flour mixture before it cools. do it ASAP.
I use dry old potatoes, steamed, no egg, minimal flour. Light and fluffy gnocchi is the result.
I'd like to try these this weekend. Anyone have any links to a good homemade tomato sauce to accompany them?
@tcadams18
smittenkitchen has two wonderful (different) tomato sauces that I make all the time.
http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/tomato-sauce-with-butter-and-onions/
http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/02/gratitude-with-a-cherry-tomato-on-top/
Delicious!
I make it with two day old rustic style Italian bread, its much lighter and fluffy perfect with a light tomato sauce. Yum
Gnocchi is something I ALWAYS order when I see it on a menu because making them seems impossible. But you've inspired me to try.
tcadams18 -
There's a recipe for Mario Batali's eggplant parmigiana online that has an easy tomato sauce that's good and thick (it contains carrots). I made it last week and fooled with the seasoning, but liked it a lot.
I am quite fond of gnocchi in the fall and winter, but my husband wasn't interested in it until we ate some in Tuscany. There is a delicious restaurant in the village of Castelmuzio, Locanda di Castelmuzio, (a few miles outside of Pienza) that makes a baked gnocchi dish that is to die for. We ate at the restaurant twice and we ordered the gnocchi both times.
The dish contains potato gnocchi, pork sausage, radicchio, and Nobile wine from Montepulciano. I attempted to recreate it (with store-bought gnocchi, though) over the winter, and I came pretty close. I have something else I want to try with it next time (including attempting to make the gnocchi myself), and then I'll share what I've come up with so far.
If you are ever near Castelmuzio, you must eat at this restaurant. It was some of the best food we had during our trip to Italy. Their house red wine was also some of the best we had on our trip. We went last October.
I tried this and to save time, I peeled and then cut the potatoes before boiling. i think that the fact that they were peeled and small pieces, they absorbed too much water. I then needed a lot of flour.
I will know for next time.
@Jwink, I left the skins on and they were still very waterlogged... I ended up needing at least twice the amount of flour in the recipe just to be able to handle the dough, and the resulting gnocchi tasted like nothing but flour...
Overall, this was far more trouble than it was worth!
oh, well. you win some you lose some.
I agree with annekeo. I tried this and I used over twice as much flour and the result was reminiscent of snotty play-dough. Maybe one day I'll try the ricotta version but for now this is the first of the epic failures in my kitchen.
A question I had, because I've been toying with the idea of making this recently, is would it still work or taste good with maybe a little bit of cheese mixed in? And if so, would a dry type of cheese, or something like ricotta be better? I know there's the ricotta gnocchi but I LOVE the potato version, just wondering if I could add a zing!
@NSane, all purpose is specific. It refers to the amount of starch in the potato. Not too much, not too little.
http://www.foodsubs.com/Potatoes.html
I like to make these with potato flour instead of wheat flour.
GREAT recipe. Points to note... Boiling the potatoes takes about 45 minutes, 2 eggs allow for better gnocchi consistency, and continuously flour the gnocchi to ensure they hold together when adding to the boiling water as they are very delicate :-)
I tried these and it definitely wasn't worth the time in my opinion. I prefer the packaged gnocchi (vacuum sealed potato gnocchi on the shelves, not frozen) tenfold, and rarely do I prefer a packaged anything over a good messy home made experience. It was fun to try though!
I have been making gnocchi for many years following my grandmother's footsteps. Her secret to light and fluffy gnocchi is to replace about 2/3 of the flour with Maizena or Corn Starch. The dough is not to be overworked, just enough to join the ingredients. Don't knead it like you would bread or pizza dough because it will be tough. The packaged stuff is disgusting, I couldn't finish my plate. There is no comparison w/ homemade. :-)