Potato dumplings "gnocchi"
( Gnocchi di patate n°1 )

Gnocchi dough recipe

Preparation and cooking

• - Prepare pureed potatoes.
  Cook potatoes with their peel in plenty of salted water or steam them.
  Peel and put them through a food mill while still hot.
• - Prepare potato-and-flour dough.
  Put puréed potatoes, flour and a pinch of salt on a lightly floured work surface.
  Mix all your ingredients. Work your dough at length.
  If there is too much flour in your dough, gnocchi will be hard.
  If you put too much potato, they will disintegrate in cooking.
  Doses in this recipe are indicative, seeing that the balance depends on potato "flouriness", its absorbency capacity and flour quality.
  Let your dough rest for a quarter of an hour.
• - Make gnocchi.
  Then roll gnocchi dough into long fingers and divide them into cylinders, about an inch long.
  Dust lightly with flour and, with your thumb, press them gently, one by one, along the back of a grater or a fork.
  Arrange them on lightly floured dishes without putting one on another one.
• - Cooking tips.
  Put your gnocchi in plenty of salted boiling water immediately.
  They are cooked as soon as they float to the surface. Remove them with a slotted spoon and transfer directly in the pan with the sauce you've chosen and made.

Note

Tips

• - I always use yellow potatoes or potatoes on whose packaging it is written that are suitable to make gnocchi. I never use new potatoes. Maternal advice that I continue to follow.
• - I prefer to steam potatoes instead of boiling them in a plenty of salted water to avoid their flesh absorb too much water.
• - You have to work potatoes still hot so the amount of water they contain gelatinises starch and prevents a stronger gluten. This is the real secret to fluffy dumplings and not chewy or mushy. So plan well your time. You can not give up boiled potatoes on a work surface making them cool!
• - I generally use semolina for dusting dishes used for arranging them just made.
• - Don't drain your gnocchi as you are used to do with pasta. When they float to the surface remove them with a skimming ladle and transfer immediately into the pan with your hot sauce. Stir with delicacy.
• - These potato gnocchi are a vegan recipe if they are tossed with vegetable sauce.

Useful links for this recipe

• - Want to consult our sauce directory? you could find new ideas to dress gnocchi.
• - Follow the link to gnocchi page to find other recipe ideas.
• - Interested in gnocchi dough with eggs?

Healthy eating

• - Be careful with gnocchi calories. Even just gnocchi without any seasoning provide 430 calories. So the sauce can increase nutrition facts very much. How to behave? if you make them rarely there are no problem but if you consume them often, priority must be to sauces low in calories without excessive ingredients (tomato and basil sauce, red or white sauce with seasonal vegetables).

Loretta