Homemade Gnocchi

Gnocchi is my happy place, especially when its paired with a delicious homemade tomato sauce. Gnocchi is like little pillows of divine pasta perfection. If that isn’t enough to make you want gnocchi I should let you in on a little secret. It is so incredibly easy to make, like for reals. You only need three ingredients, do I have your attention now? Yes? Ok good so let’s get this show on the road.

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The proportions for making gnocchi are pretty simple. Like ridiculously so. For every 2 cups of mashed potatoes (about 2 potatoes) you will need 1 egg and one cup of flour. Yup, that’s it. Now you may be wondering how something as wonderful as gnocchi can come down to such a simplistic recipe. Frankly, I choose not to question it, and just be happy that this miracle of pasta is so easy to make!

So go ahead and grab two russet potatoes, even better if you grew them yourself at home, but if not well off you go to the store. Chop them into 1″ – 2″ pieces and pop them into boiling water for about 10 minutes.

Drain the potatoes and give them a good mashing. This is a good time to get out any pent up emotions. Contrary to regular mashed potatoes, or my favourite roasted garlic mashed potatoes, we don’t want to add anything to these ones. Not yet anyway. Once they are good and mashed you can dump them out onto a clean surface.

Channel your inner child and make them into a pile like you were going to start building a sandcastle. Then make a hole in the centre, but leave some mashed potatoes at the bottom of the divot.

Carefully crack the egg into the divot, and then mix it into the mashed potatoes.

Once that is all incorporated you can start to mix in the flour. Just keep kneading it until it forms a dough and all the flour is mixed in. I like to do a bit of flour at a time to make sure it all gets mixed in and avoids making a huge mess.

Roll the dough into a ball and then cut it into four quarters.

Dust the counter with a bit of flour and then roll each quarter into a long “sausage”. Then you can then cut it into pieces about an inch wide.

Once you have them cut into little pieces you have two choices. Not to stress it’s purely a matter of personal preference. You can you for a more traditional ridged effect or a dimple. The reason for either is to give that delicious sauce something to hold onto and get into. If we left the gnocchi in the “pillow” shape that sauce would just slide off an we can’t have that! For the sake of the post I did both, but the fork method is definitely my personal favourite.

If you don’t feel like fiddling with the fork method, then you can simply poke a divot in the centre of each gnocchi. This is definitely easier, but I really love the way they look when they are rolled down the fork.

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty proud of how they turned out. I used this 1/4 portion for my dinner and I was more than full. If you’re extra hungry then by all means make up some more. I put one 1/4 dough in the fridge in plastic wrap for tomorrow’s dinner. The other two I froze.

Pop them into boiling water and cook them for 30 seconds to 1 minutes, basically you cook them until the float. I put them in and give them a quick stir and just keep an eye on them.

At this point you can pair it with your favourite sauce. Tonight I went with a delicious homemade Pomodoro sauce courtesy of Foodie Crush. I’m thinking tomorrow I may use the leftovers with a mushroom and spinach sauce. But that’s a decision for tomorrow.

If you’re curious about whether or not you can freeze the dough, I am too! I saved half and put it in the freezer. I will update as soon as I have results!