Easy Homemade Gnocchi

I've been using this recipe for years now. My mother makes gnocchi the traditional Italian way, but who has time for that? Particularly when I can make them in about a third of the time, without loosing any of the flavour! There is a trick to making them so quickly, and it's not what you might think!   

My first encounter with this super quick gnocchi recipe was year ago whist watching Yoyomax12 on YouTube. Whilst the ingredients are mostly the same as the original recipe, I have modified the quantities as it was a little too dry and didn't really yield the soft and supple gnocchi that I wanted. After a little trial and error, I found a combination that worked, and I've been using it ever since.

If often make these when I have people over for dinner. My friends and family are always impressed with how soft and pillow like these are!

So here we go.

Makes - 4-6 servings

Time -  Approximately 30 minutes

You will need:

• 450 g Potatoes
• 1 cup Plain Flour
• 2 Whole eggs
• 1/4 cup Grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. Salt

Wash your potatoes and cook them in a pot of salted water with the skin on, until cooked through. When you pierce the potato with a knife, it should slide inside very easily and without you needing to add any pressure. It's really important not to under cook the potatoes.

Once the potatoes are cooked, strain off the water and allow them to cool. When they are cool enough to hold in your hand, without burning. Peel off the skin. This should come off easily and wastes less of the potato than if you had peeled them before hand (feel free to peel the potatoes before cooking, but I prefer this method best).

Cut up the potatoes and using both a sieve and a spoon, press the hot potatoes through the sieve, with the back of the spoon into a large bowl. This will create a very smooth mashed potato. Which is exactly what we want. If you have a potato ricer, go ahead and use this instead.

Now that our potatoes are mashed, put a large pot of water with 1/2 tablespoon salt on the stove, so that it can come to a roiling boil, whilst we continue to make out gnocchi.

Add the rest of the ingredients into your bowl of potato. Mix well, until the mixture is well combined and forms a soft and sticky dough, use your hands if you need to, I often do. Resist the temptation here to add more flour, DON'T DO IT.

Grab yourself a pastry bag, I tend to use the disposable kind, but if I don't have any of those on hand, a large Ziploc bag or my trusty reusable pastry bag are my next choice (depending on how much I can be bothered cleaning the reusable pastry bag). Put half of the mixture into the pastry bag. Cut the tip off the Ziploc bag or the disposable pastry bag tip, so you have an approximately 1.5 cm hole. I have in the past tried to put the whole mixture into my pastry bag, unless your the hulk, take my advice and do half at a time.

Once your pot of water has come to a rolling boil, squeeze 2-3 cm lengths of gnocchi dough from the pastry bag. Cutting it off straight into the pot. Be strategic about how you do this, and cut them in as close to the boiling water as you can. (Whilst the rest of this recipe can be done with older children, this is definitely adults only. Watch the video below to see how I did it). Once the gnocchi float to the surface and stay there for about 30 seconds, your gnocchi are cooked. They do puff up slightly during cooking and when eaten, should soft and supple in texture. If they are dense or elastic, that's a sign that they are under-cooked or that too much flour was used. Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the water, as it's best to cook these in batches and place onto a baking tray.

Once all of the gnocchi are cooked, marry them with some of your favourite sauce! Check out how to make my Mushroom cream sauce which goes with these gnocchi just perfectly.

Now all there is, is to enjoy!