Potato Gnocchi from Scratch

Name: Potato Gnocchi Recipe: Homemade Gnocchi with Bacon
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: Italian cuisine
Ingredients: Potatoes 3-4; Wheat flour (including dusting) 1 cup (130 g); Egg 1; Salt a pinch; Water 2 l; Salt 14 g (7 g per 1 l of water); Bacon or ham, parsley, Parmesan for serving; Salt, black and red pepper to taste

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45 mins

Italian gnocchi pasta has very ancient roots. It is most often made from various grains, pumpkin, potatoes or other vegetables with flour added, and it belongs to fresh pasta, pasta fresca. It is probably one of the few boiled-dough dishes you can make often without any special skills.

Gnocchi are essentially close relatives of dumplings, lazy cottage cheese dumplings and galushki. They often look alike, and the technique is very similar. They are small pieces of soft dough, often in quite fanciful shapes, boiled in salted water or broth, then tossed with a sauce or other additions, often sprinkled with cheese and herbs, and served hot.

The most common gnocchi are made from potatoes, small and oval. But quite often you will come across ones made from other vegetables or even plain flour, depending on the region and its traditions. This pasta can be a dish on its own, a side dish, or an ingredient in soups. They are also often shaped as concave elongated shells, although that pasta is typical of certain regions of Italy and is called cavatelli. But drawing a firm line between similar pastas is extremely hard.

To get potato pasta of decent quality that doesn’t fall apart in the water and keeps a distinct potato flavor, use particular potato varieties, usually yellow ones with a high starch content. Otherwise you will have to add more flour, and the pasta will taste like plain dough. Gnocchi are sold in stores, but the vast majority of home cooks prefer to make them themselves.

The size of gnocchi varies widely, from as big as a wine cork to tiny lumps. What matters is that the shape or surface of the pieces can hold the sauce. To ridge the surface, a special ridged board is used, the same one as for shaping garganelli. Small gnocchi are shaped on a “spiky” grater or by rolling them along an ordinary table fork.

Ingredients

2 servings

Potatoes 3-4
Wheat flour (including dusting) 1 cup (130 g)
Egg 1
Salt a pinch

Water 2 l
Salt 14 g (7 g per 1 l of water)

Bacon or ham, parsley, Parmesan for serving
Salt, black and red pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Potato dough

For the dough you need potatoes, preferably with a high starch content. Ours are the red-purple tubers with yellowish flesh. If you know your potatoes fry well, they will be perfect for the dough.

Boil the potatoes in their skins or bake them until soft. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much how you cook them; what matters is that the potatoes don’t take on moisture and turn sticky and gummy. If you bake them or boil them in their skins, it will all work out.

Let the potatoes cool, peel and mash them. Carefully remove the “eyes” and dark spots. If the potatoes were baked, it is better to cut each one in half and scoop out the middle with a spoon, because the layer next to the skin is usually tough and hard to mash. Mash them roughly the way you would for mashed potatoes, but without adding any liquid. A hand potato ricer is handy for this, a truly amazing gadget. I found out by accident that the ricer holds back the part of the potato next to the skin, so it doesn’t end up in the mash.
Make the dough. It is better to do the rest of the work with the dough on a table or board. Put the potatoes on the table and make a well in the middle. Season with a pinch of fine salt, add soft wheat flour (in Italy this flour is called farina), roughly one part flour to every three parts potato by weight, and one chicken egg.
Knead a soft dough, working the potatoes and flour together with your hands. You will most likely need to add a little more flour so the dough stops sticking. Roll the dough into a ball and put it on a floured board. By the way, when shaping gnocchi, dust both the dough and the board quite generously.

Shaping the gnocchi

Cut the dough into pieces. Pinch off a piece the size of a large chicken egg, roll it by hand into a rope as thick as a wine cork, and cut it into pieces with a knife. The size of the pieces determines the size of the pasta. To start, I suggest making gnocchi that are neither the biggest nor the smallest. Let them be 3-4 cm long and as thick as a pencil.
Shape the pieces and make the ridges. If you don’t have a ridged board, a table fork with long tines will do. Dust a cut piece of dough with flour and roll it into an elongated oval. With your fingers, pressing lightly, roll the piece along the ridged surface, and you get beautiful even “ribs” on the dough.

Transfer the gnocchi to a floured board and work through all the prepared potato dough the same way. If you end up with too many, they keep for a few days. To do this, chill the pieces briefly, literally 10 mins in the freezer, then move them to the refrigerator, to the compartment where the temperature is just above zero.

Sauce and cooking

Before boiling the gnocchi, prepare a sauce or topping for the pasta. In most cases the sauce is quite simple. Most often it is olive oil or butter, Parmesan or pecorino, and a little greenery. Sometimes garlic fried in oil, hot pepper and parsley serve as the sauce. We decided to toss the pasta with fried bacon and cheese.

Fry the bacon and prepare the topping. Dice the bacon or ham and fry it in a pan over medium heat until the fat starts to render. Add black and hot pepper and salt, to taste. For the topping, grate a piece of Parmesan, Grana Padano or pecorino and blitz it in a blender with a few sprigs of parsley.
Boil the gnocchi. Set a large pot with 2 l of water over high heat and add 14 g of salt (7 g per 1 l of water). Once the water comes to a boil, drop in all the gnocchi. Stir the pasta very gently so it doesn’t clump or stick to the bottom. The pasta cooks quickly, 3-4 mins from the moment it floats up, almost like homemade pelmeni.
Fry the gnocchi with the bacon. Drain the cooked gnocchi in a colander to let the water run off, and put them into the pan with the hot sauce, in our case the fried bacon. Stir and fry everything together over medium heat for 2-3 mins, stirring constantly.

Serving

Put the gnocchi on a plate, preferably a shallow bowl or a small soup plate, top with the pieces of bacon left in the pan, and sprinkle the pasta with the prepared Parmesan and parsley.
Serve the pasta right away, while it is still hot.

Calories and macros

450 kcal

Serving ≈ 1320 g

Protein14 g14% of kcal
Fat3 g7% of kcal
Carbs83 g79% of kcal

100 g34 kcalProtein 1.1 gFat 0.2 gCarbs 6.3 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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Potato Gnocchi from Scratch

Ingredients

For the dough

For boiling

For the sauce and serving