Having been in Italy for two weeks, it has been a bit difficult to keep up with the competition in Project Food Blog, away from home and without access to a kitchen for half of my trip. In case I would participate in the 4th challenge, I paid attention to the food around me in Rome, and tried to find what I would be able to make in my miniscule (update: and *very* ill-equiped) Trastevere apartment. After seeing it served as a primi piatti in countless restaurants, I decided I would make gnocchi.
The great thing about gnocchi is that they’re made with few ingredients: potatoes, flour, eggs, olive oil, salt. They also require no special equipment. You can make a large quantity of gnocchi for a few dollars and roll them pretty much anywhere, as I found out when I made a batch on my apartment’s wooden bedside table.
My kitchen in Rome (minus the bedside table).
Although gnocchi are simple to prepare, they are also easy to mess with. Too much liquid and your gnocchi will be gummy; too much flour and they’ll be dense and heavy on the stomach. When perfect, they’re light and plump.
If I succeeded in making a delicious dinner in such limited conditions, you can certainly do the same at home! Here’s the walkthrough to your perfect homemade gnocchi.
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Classic Gnocchi
Based on Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino’s tried-and-true family recipe
1 kg (2.2 lbs) russet potatoes (about 5 large), unpeeled
300 g (1 ½ cups) all-purpose flour
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Step 1: Cook the potatoes
Wash your potatoes thoroughly without peeling them. Boiling them unpeeled lessens the water that penetrates the potatoes while they’re cooking. Water is a gnocchi downfall. This is also why you must use the exact cooking time. Avoid piercing them during cooking as it’ll allow water to get in. Small potatoes take 10–15 minutes to boil; medium 20–25 minutes; large 35–45 minutes. If you’re unsure about your cooking time, boil one extra potato that you’ll use to test.
Cooked and peeled potatoes.
Step 2: Mash the potatoes
Once your potatoes are done, drain them and let them cool until you can handle them. Peel the potatoes and mash them into a large bowl: the tool that will help you breeze through this step is a potato ricer. It guarantees lump-free gnocchi. If you don’t have a ricer, mash your potatoes with a fork (like I did) or a potato masher. Pay extra attention to make sure you eliminate as many lumps as possible.
Let the mashed potatoes cool to room temperature.
Mashing potatoes with a fork, until no lumps remain.
Step 3: Prepare the dough
Mix flour and salt together in a small bowl. Mix the mashed potatoes with the egg yolks and olive oil. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the potatoes and mix gently until the flour is moistened and the dough looks crumbly.
Mixing the ingredients together until the flour is moistened and the dough looks crumbly.
Lightly flour your work surface. Put your dough on the surface. Knead it gently to incorporate the flour: press on the dough with your hands, fold it in half, turn it by a quarter turn and press it again. You should do this for about 1 minute: over-kneading is another gnocchi downfall. It leads to a tough, rubbery texture.
Kneading the dough using both hands for about 1 minute.
After kneading, your dough should feel soft and smooth. If it sticks to your work surface, sprinkle a bit more flour — but keep in mind that you must limit the amount of flour you add to the gnocchi to make sure they don’t become heavy and dense.
When you dough is ready, put it in a bowl and cover with a clean kitchen towel.
Kneaded gnocchi dough, ready to be rolled into bites.
Step 4: Roll and cut the dough into bites
Clean your work surface, dry it thoroughly and sprinkle lightly with flour. Tear off a lemon-size piece of dough and roll it into a rope (about 3/4 in. diameter). Use a knife to cut out square bites.
Gnocchi dough ropes, cut into squares.
Now you have two choices: leave your gnocchi plain, looking like miniature pillows, or indent them using a gnocchi board or a fork.
Leaving them plain is a good choice when you want to fry them in butter, or serve them with a classic brown butter (see this recipe). I really like the crunchy texture it renders, a nice contrast to the creamy interior.
Plain pillow-looking gnocchi.
Indenting gnocchi is ideal when you want to serve them with a sauce, because the pattern allows it to better cling to the pasta.
To indent gnocchi, you can use either a special board or a fork. The method to roll and indent is a bit intriguing and difficult to explain in words. I’ve put together a 30-second video that demystifies the process:
My dough was a day old when I filmed this video so it was firmer than usual. When the dough is fresh, the gnocchi needs just a soft press to be indented.
Two kinds of gnocchi side by side: rolled on a special board, and rolled on a fork.
As you roll your gnocchi, arrange them in a single layer on baking sheets, making sure they don’t touch. Gnocchi are best cooked within 2–3 hours of being made (keep at room temperature).
To freeze: put the gnocchi on the baking sheets straight into the freezer. Once hard, transfer them to freezer bags in portion sizes. They’ll keep for two months.
Step 5: Cook the gnocchi
Bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Put about 12–15 gnocchi into the water at once and wait until they come back to the surface. When they do, they’re ready. Don’t turn your back on them because it takes just two minutes! Use a slotted spoon to fish them out, put them in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to keep them warm. Repeat the process until all the gnocchi are cooked.
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Gnocchi are lovely with different sauces, from a simple fresh tomato to a slowly simmered meat ragù. They’re also delicious au gratin, mixed with a cheesy white sauce and broiled in the oven. Use your imagination! You’ll be so proud that you made your own that I’m sure you’ll find them delicious any way you serve them.
My gnocchi, as I served them in Rome: sauteed in butter and olive oil, with pesto, sprinkled with parmigiano-reggiano, accompanied by a fresh-from-the-market side salad.
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This is my entry to Project Food Blog 2010 Challenge #4. If you liked this post, click here to vote for me. Voting is open from Oct. 11th through Oct. 14th. A big thank you to all who voted for me in the first three challenges!
Your gnocchi look amazing… it's hard to believe they were prepared in a teensy kitchen (and on your bedside table)! Great job on the tutorial too. It's clear and concise, and the photos are beautiful and illustrate the steps perfectly. It totally makes me want to scrap my dinner plans and make gnocchi right now. :)
Great job! You've got my vote.
Great post – very informative and your photos are lovely. Nice touch with the video! Good luck and hope to join you in the next round :)
I made gnocchi for the first time last week but I used sweet potatoes. It turned out fabulously but I sucked (and wasted a bunch of time trying) at getting the indents to work. Thanks for the video! Can't wait to try out that technique.
Sweet potato gnocchi is GREAT! One of my favorite variations. If you managed to get the right gnocchi texture, you overcame what's hardest to succeed when making gnocchi! Next time you'll just have to get the indents right, and it's a breeze once you know how to do it.
I've always wanted to try making gnocchi, and now I understand the process completely. Thank you for the excellent tutorial, you definitely earned a vote from me!
Thank you and good luck to you in the competition!
This looks so delicious! Last year, I was given a potato ricer for this exact purpose and I still, as of yet, haven't made homemade gnocchi. It's on my to-do list.
I also love the tip about boiling the potatoes with the skin on, I never would have thought of that.
Hope you go to the next round! By the way, your studio kitchen is adorable, even if it is tiny. Love your blog!
My Roman studio was indeed adorable. Many people find the kitchen not that tiny at all, but it's because all the apartment was in one room, letting the kitchen breathe more than if it had been cramped in it's own little space. It had a nice stove with an oven (which is rare in Europe), but unfortunately, it was very badly equiped in terms of accessories and cooking pots and pans. It's a shame because I would've wanted to cook even more! Thank you for the compliments about my post and my blog, they are very much appreciated. I hope to keep you as a reader for a long time!
Great tutorial! Your gnocchi look perfect. And you do a nice job of breaking down the steps and making it all look really easy. nicely done. I voted for you!
Good luck! hope to see us both in round 5!!! =)
I think it's easy to overcomplicate things when illustrating a step-by-step by showing too many of the steps thus making the recipes look more difficult or time-consuming than it really is. I really tried to bring it back to the gnocchi basics, happy it seems to please many readers!
I very much liked your post on fruit crisps, especially the part where you list all the different variations that can be made (with the flavorings to add and adjustments to make to the basic ingredients). Very useful! I sure hope to see you get further in the competition. Good luck!
I love that you made these on your bedside table! They look absolutely amazing and super professional. Fabulous job… And you get like a million extra points for doing all this away from home in Italy!
I should have taken a picture of me sitting on the floor rolling the gnocchi by the bed… the owners will never know what happened on that table! :) Of course I cleaned it very thoroughly and didn't damage it, but still, it added a lot of charm to the process (that and cooking in Rome, of course!). Thank you for your comment!
Looks yummy and I've bookmarked it to try next time! I voted for you! Good luck!
Thank you! :D
Oh what a perfect topic for this challenge! I have not had much success with gnocchi and have probably experienced all the problems you mentioned in the post. But now, I feel a little better and confident about maybe trying them again. Funnily enough, one time, I tried to avoid making potato gnocchi (because I was worried about messing them up) and tried a recipe for spinach/ricotta gnocchi in the Silver Spoon cookbook. I messed those up even worse! Anyway, thanks so much for this excellent post!
I don't know what are the other ingredients in the Silver Spoon spinach ricotta gnocchi, but I do make some "quenelles" (or soft dumplings) with spinach and ricotta that are dropped in stock to make a very elegant and delicate soup. Ricotta makes the dumplings very fragile and tender, I can imagine it probably adds a lot of moisture to the gnocchi as well (and moisture is something that very easily turn gnocchi to mush). I think you would be better off trying these easy basic ones, you'll most probably succeed in making them perfect and then you'll feel more confident trying other variations again. Good luck!
Thank you so much for the video tutorial. I have a gnocchi board but never knew how to use it properly. Your gnocchi are perfect!
Sometimes it's all about the little trick you have to see to succeed. Someone showed me how to roll gnocchi the first time I made them – I had never figured how to do it before. Allowing other people to demystify the process was exactly my goal, happy to know it does!
Your gnocchi were absolutely gorgeous and your photo tutorial was instructive and great! Fabulous entry! (VOTE!)
Thank you for your vote, very appreciated!
that, looks, incredible. way to go on a labor intensive job!
Whit
Thank you! They don't take so long to make, certainly quicker than making fresh pasta. And very rewarding!
I love gnocchi, and would love to try this sometime. Thanks for making a daunting process look a little less impossible!
They are a bit tricky but the main thing is to know the little secrets that make a big difference like boiling the potatoes unpeeled. I hope you'll give these a try some day!
Wonderful post! And such perfect timing. This weekend I bought a bag of potatoes and was saying I wanted to make gnocchi, which I've never done before. Your step by step tutorial is just what I need. Thanks!
So happy that my recipe may help you to get some gnocchi goodness! I'm sure you'll do well, you have to tell me about it after trying it.
What a great post!! Your gnocchi is just gorgeous and the pictures are perfect and very informative!! You've got my vote, for sure!!
Beautiful photos, and great tips for gnocchi-making! I admit I haven't even attempted them since I was discouraged by a very critical instructor in culinary school. But I know how wonderful a well-made gnocchi can be, and how leaden and horrible they can be if not! I'm voting for you!
This is the best post I've seen.
Oddly enough, I am hosting a bunch of girls this weekend to make GNOCCHI! I finally grabbed my mom's gnocchi board from her house.. It is only, ohhh 30 years old!!!!
Wow! You're very lucky to inherit a vintage gnocchi plank! I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun making your own, a great party idea! Thank you for your kind words, I hope this will allow it to make it further in the competition!
buonissimi, bellissimi, brava :)
It’s very rewarding to cook a wonderful meal in a small space. I remember my kitchen in Rome was even smaller than yours, but I always had amazing dinner parties.
Bravo for pulling off dinner parties in such a small space! When you stay in Europe for a while, you get used to it. As I told Mardi in reply to her comment, I should have been more precise in my post and mention that the main problem of my Roman kitchen wasn't so much it's size but it's critical lack of cooking equipment and kitchen instruments. Even the most basic things were missing! Next time, I'll bring my basics with me to make sure I'll be able to cook properly :) Fortunately, gnocchi could be made with the bare minimum: my two hands and a fork! Good thing because it allowed me to post. Thank you for your comment!
I love the video instruction, and am impressed with your improvisation, i.e. bedside table!!! I thoroughly enjoyed this instruction and am looking forward to voting. I hope you make it to the end. You have a lot of talent and an amazing aesthetic. Your presentation is wonderful, and I enjoy just having your website just open on my desktop. Good luck!!
I was indeed happy to have this bedside table otherwise I would have had to roll them on the floor…! Don't think I would've eaten those :) Thank you so much for your kind comments, I sure hope ot make it far in the competition but the other contestants are so amazing! I'll do my very best.
Fantastic step by step instructions. I haven't tried making gnocchi, but will have to rectify that using your instructions :)
Please do! They're really worth it. The great thing is that when you feel confortable enough making them, you can start variations like adding herbs or other flavorings or even replace some of the potatoes with squash or pumpkin. Impossible to get bored with gnocchi!
Your sautéed gnocchi look absolutely scrumptious!! Bravaaa!!!
Thank you for once more linking to my site, it makes me very proud to have been your guide again! You roll gnocchi like a real pro, and the extra information makes this a perfect gnocchi tutorial. The student has surpassed the master.
You have my vote, which counts double, i.e. for the last challenge as well… ahem!
Hugs and happy cooking,
Ele xx
Really beautiful job with this challenge. Your gnocchi look absolutely perfect!
Thank you! They were delicious as well!
Ah, this makes it clear, and I remember trying to make gnocchi once and failing dismally. They are not easy to make! Yours came out perfect, and I wish I could get a taste…though you've made the steps so simple, I think I'm ready to tackle making it again!
I think the main thing is starting with the right ratios. I used a tried and true Italian family recipe, it probably helped me succeed! Don't hesitate to try them again, it's really worth it.
Step by step perfection! :)
I love that you pulled this off in spite of space constraints.
You have my vote!!!
Thank you for your support! It was a perfect recipe to make with practically no equipment, just my two hands and the gnocchi board I bought at the Campo di Fiori market for 2.50 euros. I'm coming back with many Italian recipe ideas I can't wait to make at home! I'll certainly post more and I hope you'll like it.
Yum these look delicious! And you think *that's* a minuscule apartment? I lived in about 15m squared for over 4 years in Paris with no oven, one burner and a shower cubicle in my "kitchen"! This was practically luxury compared to that! However, props to you for working in an unfamiliar space :-) You *totally* could have done a dinner for the last round in that space!!!
You're right Mardi, the oven and 4 burners were a particular luxury in this kind of studio apartment and I was very excited when I got in… unfortunately, the worst part was how ill-equipped it was! A pan, one pot, a spatula, a plastic spoon and basic tableware. The only knife (that you can see on one of my pictures) was so dull that it was even hard to cut my gnocchi dough properly. I always travel with my knives when I rent an apartment but I forgot them this time because I left in a hurry. You can be sure that I will always pack them first now, just in case! A while ago, this apartment was certainly better equipped but things probably got damaged over time and the owner didn't replace them. It's a shame…
Honestly, given the lack of even the most basic tools, I didn't have the courage to try to pull the dinner party off. I very much preferred planning it, gathering information about Roman cooking and shopping for everything I'll need to host my best friends in the next few weeks. I think it'll make for the perfect coming back party. And I'll be able to cook in my own kitchen :) I'll post pictures!
I cannot wait to read about it! We spent a summer in Italy 5 years ago and loved it so much. The food, the wine, the history! And I totally kow what you mean about some places being better equipped than others – we’ve rented places in France, Italy, Hawaii amongst others and its interesting to see what each place comes with (or doesn’t!). That stove though – luxury! Glad you got to make the gnocchi!