Monday, June 7, 2010

More Gnocchi!



I have posted about making gnocchi in the past, but it is something that I really like to have in the freezer for a quick weeknight dinner. I bought three baking potatoes and baked them in a 450F oven until soft. I figure if I am going to spend the time to make gnocchi, I may as well make lots of it.

After cooling and peeling the potatoes, I thoroughly mashed them and weight them. According to what I have seen online here is the best ratio for the gnocchi dough:

about 7-8 ounces mashed potato
1 cup flour
1 egg 1/2 tsp salt

I adjusted the amount of mashed potato to be 28 ounces so I could easily quadruple the recipe and off I went. This time, making the dough went so much quicker and smoother. I feel like I am getting a hang of it and definitely feel more confident about knowing how much flour I need. I quickly shaped pieces of the dough into ropes about the size of my thumb and cut into small pieces using my bench scraper.

There are two things I did differently from in the past. I made the pieces smaller since they puff up some while cooking and I also didn't bother with making the fork prints in each piece. That saved a significant amount of time. It just seemed like in the past that the fork prints didn't do much for the texture and taste of the gnocchi, they seem to be more for authenticity. But my husband won't notice and if it saves me some time, then I am more than happy to skip that step.

So I have a whole tray of cooked gnocchi that I can divide into about three bags for the freezer. That should last us for a while and I feel accomplished making something I once thought would be too complicated and difficult.

No comments:

Post a Comment