Quick Gnocchi Dinner with Dairy-Free Tomato-Pesto Sauce

My absolute favorite cuisine is Italian. However, I always find myself wanting to eat out when I crave pasta because my homemade Italian food doesn’t taste as good as it does in the restaurants. Not to mention it’s usually pretty hard to make. So, I decided to create a recipe featuring a quick gnocchi dinner topped off with quick, homemade, and dairy-free sauce. 

This pasta recipe lives up to restaurant quality. Now, you can enjoy the comfort of Italian in your own home without the stress of cooking.

Quick Gnocchi Dinner

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 1 minuteCook time: 5 minutesTotal time: 6 minutesServings:2 servings

Ingredients

• 1 package potato gnocchi
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil

Instructions

1. 
   

   Pour the olive oil on a skillet turned up to medium heat. Move it around so it covers as much of the skillet as possible.

2. 
   

   Open a bag of gnocchi and pour it on the skillet with olive oil. Move the pieces of pasta around and cook on the burner for 5 minutes. Try to flip them all over at some point so it cooks both sides. Remove from heat once the gnocchi turns golden brown.

If you want to use the same brand of gnocchi I did, it is a package of De Cecco potato gnocchi. I got it from my local grocery store, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. 

I decided to use a skillet because this is what makes it a quick gnocchi recipe. This is also way easier than boiling pasta in water. 

It gives the gnocchi a unique crispy bite on the outside and a gooey potato-based center on the inside. You will have a warm and delicious pasta base in 5 minutes or less, depending on how crispy you like it.

There are a ton of ways to dress up gnocchi, but here is what I decided to pair with it:

Dairy-Free Tomato-Pesto Sauce

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 3 minutesCook time: 6 minutesTotal time: 9 minutesServings:2 servings

Ingredients

• 1 small 8oz can tomato sauce
• 1 chopped tomato
• 1/4 cup black olives
• 2 Tablespoons dairy-free pesto
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon basil leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 Tablespoon hot sauce optional

Instructions

1. 
   

   Start by combining the spices in a bowl (dry ingredients).

2. 
   

   Pour the tomato sauce, tomato, olives, olive oil, pesto, and hot sauce in a small sauce pan. Add the spices as well.

3. 
   

   Cook for 6 minutes or so on medium-high heat until the sauce warms and begins to slightly bubble.

4. 
   

   Gently pour the sauce over the cooked gnocchi in serving bowls.

I came up with this sauce recipe based on traditional puttanesca sauces that I have eaten. I like spicy things, so I added hot sauce, but this is totally optional.

Mixing fresh tomatoes with plain canned sauce creates the perfect combination of prepared and homemade sauce. This is to improve the taste as well as save time.

Additionally, the pesto adds a slightly unique flavor to the more traditional tomato sauce. I am dairy-free, so I usually use a canned jar of pesto that does not have parmesan cheese in it. This is the jar I used if you want to reference it. The brand is Roland and it’s called San Remo pesto. 

Overall, the sauce is full of flavor and only requires tossing all of the ingredients in one big pot. If you’re not dairy-free, it would also be easy to top it with cheese or use parmesan-based pesto. 

Not only is this quick gnocchi recipe super easy, but it’s also pretty healthy. The gnocchi bag I bought says that the entire bag contains two servings. One serving is listed to be about 250 calories with 7g of protein. This pasta has a higher nutritional value than most, and that serving is still pretty low calorie. Also, the sauce is low in fat and full of vegetables.

Try this recipe on a night when you want something warm and comforting that is still healthy. Nothing tastes better than gnocchi with tomatoes, especially not when it only takes 15 minutes to create. 

• < 20 Minutes
• Dinner
• Nutrition