How to Make Potato Gnocchi

A simple tutorial and recipe for how to make potato gnocchi (potato dumplings).

Update:  3/20/16 pin-able image and minor editing

Gnocchi are delicious soft dumplings made of flour, eggs, and potatoes.  I'm focusing on potato gnocchi in this post but apparently they can also be made with ricotta, butternut squash, or other similar ingredients.

Gnocchi are delicious soft dumplings made of flour, eggs, and potatoes. [Tweet this]

Everything I know about potato gnocchi I learned from Italian Food Forever's How to make Potato Gnocchi.  It's a great step by step tutorial all about how to make gnocchi.  The main points I took away from this post were:  it's easier than most people think, bake instead of boil your potatoes, and don't use too much flour.  With these tips, I made potato gnocchi.  I loved it and so did my husband it was simple, inexpensive, and delicious.  There are many variations of gnocchi but for my first time, I kept it simple.  It turned out great so I'll definitely experiment with adding herbs and spices in the future and maybe even other main ingredients.  I want to try ricotta gnocchi some time too, but I think it's a good idea to start basic and get this recipe down before I start to experiment.

It's easier than you think, bake don't boil potatoes, & easy on the flour. [Tweet this]

Potato Gnocchi

Ingredients:

4 russet potatoes (about 2 cups of potato insides)
1 egg
1-1 1/2 cup(s) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt

Start with baked potatoes and scrape out the insides.  Keep the potato skins for Loaded Baked Potato Skins.  You want about 2 cups of potato insides.

Squeeze the potato through your fingers, use a potato ricer, a fork, or a masher to break up the potato as finely as you can get it.

Place the potato mash in a medium bowl, add the salt, egg, and 1 cup of flour.  Stir briefly to combine then turn out onto a lightly floured surface.

Knead gently by hand adding the rest of the flour as needed until ingredients just come together and you have a smooth dough.  Don't overwork the dough and don't add too much flour.

Cut the dough in half (or more) and roll each half into a thick rope about the thickness of a thumb.  Thicker is fine you'll just have bigger gnocchi and if you get too thin the rope will break (so you will easily know if you are getting too thin).  Short ropes are easier to roll than long ropes but roll however you're comfortable.

Cut the rope into segments about the same size as the thickness of the rope.  The gnocchi are fine like this, but you can also indent them with your thumb against the tines of a fork to dimple and give them texture (great for holding sauce).

At this point, you can refrigerate the gnocchi until ready to cook, or I find it easier to freeze them (so they are more solid).  I use the gnocchi the same day I make them so I don't know how well they keep.

Drop the prepared gnocchi into boiling, lightly salted water and boil until they float.  Remove from the water and sauce as desired.  A simple garlic butter sauce is what I made (I'll post this next time) but a simple (tomato based) pasta sauce would be great, or a pesto, or a white wine sauce.

Makes about 2 servings (maybe more if you scrape out more potato insides or have really big potatoes)

Experiment and enjoy.

Other recipes mentioned in this post:

How to Make a Great Baked Potato	Loaded Baked Potato Skins	Simple Pasta Sauce  -----------------
White Wine Sauce and Shrimp Scampi	Spinach Pistachio Pesto

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