If you know me at all, you know how much I love pasta (the more carbs, the better). But, if you REALLY know me, you know how much I love gnocchi. I’m honestly not even a quarter Italian but when it comes to food, I would say I’m 100%. The number of times I have had people ask me what gnocchi is is truly upsetting.
If you don’t know, which is apparently super normal, they are little potato dumplings that are served as a pasta dish with pretty much any sauce you can think of.
Now that you know what gnocchi is, you’re probably all like:
If that’s true, let me take you on my journey of creating Tasty’s Homemade Gnocchi. I decided to finally start trying them out, starting with my all-time favorite.
#SpoonTip: I am not a cook and never have been. I rely mainly on frozen dinners and toast. That being said, let’s see how this goes.
Step 1
To start, ya gotta take some taters and boil them until you can easily stick a fork in them. This didn’t take very long, so we are off to a good start.
Step 2
Next, the taters need to be mashed. If you don’t own a masher and think that you can just do this with a fork, you cannot. Trust me. I will discuss further in a moment. Anyways, once the potatoes are completely mashed, add one egg and some salt and pepper and mix it all together *with your hands.* Yup. We’re gettin’ messy. That’s what it takes for real, quality Gnocchi.
Step 3
Now it’s time to start forming those beautiful little potato dumplings. Cover your ball of dough in flour. If you think you got enough flour, you didn’t. You’re then going to roll out the dough to cut it into little nuggets. This is where I hit a little bump in the road (see sad rolled dough).
Remember the masher I mentioned before? Yeah if you don’t use a masher, you will be picking out giant chunks of potato until you’re 100 years old.
Step 4
Alright, SO, once you’ve gotten the dough rolled out (and have picked out all of the potato chunks, if you have that problem), you can begin to cut out little nuggets about 1 inch or even a little smaller.
One of the techniques shown on Tasty to form the gnocchi is to roll it down the back side of a fork, and this was the only one that worked out for me, so I stuck with it (S/O Weston Corica for your talented gnocchi-forming skills).
Step 5
Can we take a moment to look at the image above? WOW. Beautiful. Once your gnocchi dumplings are formed, boil some water and plop your gnocchi into the pot. When the little dumplings start to float, you can take them out and cook them! YAY!
I cooked mine in a pan with some butter. There’s not really a set time, so just stir and monitor until it’s cooked to your liking. For my meal, I added vodka Sauce to my gnocchi and paired it with a nice little Italian side salad (and bread, duh).
The gnocchi, to my surprise, was pretty freakin’ good, lumpy potato chunks and all! I 10/10 would recommend making this. It was a fun experience, and afterward, I felt really accomplished.