Video:How to Make Potato Gnocchi

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Transcript:How to Make Potato Gnocchi

Hi, I am Gretchen Siegchrist for About.com Food, and I am going to show you how to make gnocchi. These yummy potato dumplings can be used in most Italian dishes, and they are a great substitute for pasta.

Potato Gnocchi Ingredients

For this recipe, you will need:

• 2 pounds of russet potatoes,(about 3 potatoes)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups of flour (approximately)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cook and Prep the Potatoes

To begin, we will bake the potatoes in the oven. Wash them, and then prick them with a fork to vent out the steam as they bake. Place the potatoes in the oven and let them cook at four hundred degrees for about forty minutes or so, until they are soft on the inside.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and let them cool until you are able to handle them. Cut the potatoes in half and let them cool even more until they stop steaming.

Mixing Potato Gnocchi Dough

Now, we will scoop out the insides of the potatoes and discard the skins. For light and fluffy gnocchi, we need super smooth potatoes with no lumps, so we will use an electric mixer to mix them up. Separate two eggs. You can discard the whites and then beat the yolks together. Add the egg yolks, flour and salt to the potatoes.

Mix these ingredients together by hand until they form a soft dough. You may need to add a little bit more flour if the dough is too moist.

Prepping & Rolling Gnocchi Dough

Dust your worksurface with flour, and then roll out the potato dough a little bit at a time until you have snakes that are about the width of your thumb. Cut these into pieces that are a little less than an inch long.

We will need to give the gnocchi some texture so that the sauce will stick to it better. You can do this with the tines of a fork, or use the handle of a fork to make little indentations on each side of the gnocchi. Repeat this process until you have formed all of the dough into individual gnocchi.

Cooking your Potato Gnocchi

Place the gnocchi on a plate, putting waxed paper between the layers so that they do not stick together. To cook the gnocchi, drop them a few at a time into a large pot of boiling water. When they float to the surface you will know that they are done cooking. You can remove them with a slotted spoon and place them in a bowl.

Top the gnocchi with your favorite sauce and a little bit of grated cheese and they are ready to enjoy. Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the web at Food.about.com.