Potato Gnocchi
Baked potatoes, riced hot, and the least flour you can get away with. Kneading is the enemy here, not the technique.
- Prep
- 35m
- Cook
- 1h 25m
- Total
- 2h
- Serves
- 4
- Effort
- Involved
Method
Tap a step number to mark it done. Tap an ingredient once for got it, twice for need it.
| 4 | Bake whole on a bed of salt at 200°C / 400°F until collapsing 1h 15m Baking, not boiling. Boiled potato absorbs water and every gram of it costs you flour. | Rice the hot flesh onto a tray and let the steam escape 10m Hot potato starch takes up flour more efficiently, so you need less of it. Cold potato needs half as much again. | Bring together with the barest kneading, six or seven folds 5m Every extra fold develops gluten and demands more flour, which is how gnocchi turn into erasers. | Roll into 2 cm ropes and cut into pillows 15m Flour the board lightly. Ridges from a fork or board are optional and change nothing about the texture. | Boil in batches until they float, then finish in the sage butter 6m Thirty seconds after they surface, no longer. Then straight into the pan with a spoonful of the water. | |
| a handful | ||||||
| 150 g | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 1 tsp | ||||||
| a scrape | ||||||
| 80 g | Brown the butter until it smells of hazelnuts, then drop in the sage 5m | |||||
| 15 | ||||||
| 50 g | ||||||
-
Bake whole on a bed of salt at 200°C / 400°F until collapsing
1h 15m- floury potatoes 4
- coarse salt a handful
Baking, not boiling. Boiled potato absorbs water and every gram of it costs you flour.
-
Rice the hot flesh onto a tray and let the steam escape
10m- from 1 Bake whole on a bed of salt at 200°C / 400°F until collapsing
Hot potato starch takes up flour more efficiently, so you need less of it. Cold potato needs half as much again.
-
Bring together with the barest kneading, six or seven folds
5m- from 2 Rice the hot flesh onto a tray and let the steam escape
- plain flour 150 g
- egg yolk 1
- fine salt 1 tsp
- nutmeg (optional) a scrape
Every extra fold develops gluten and demands more flour, which is how gnocchi turn into erasers.
-
Roll into 2 cm ropes and cut into pillows
15m- from 3 Bring together with the barest kneading, six or seven folds
Flour the board lightly. Ridges from a fork or board are optional and change nothing about the texture.
-
Brown the butter until it smells of hazelnuts, then drop in the sage
5m- butter 80 g
- sage leaves 15
- hard cheese 50 g
-
Boil in batches until they float, then finish in the sage butter
6m- from 4 Roll into 2 cm ropes and cut into pillows
- from 5 Brown the butter until it smells of hazelnuts, then drop in the sage
Thirty seconds after they surface, no longer. Then straight into the pan with a spoonful of the water.
Why baked, and why hot
Gnocchi are a fight between potato and flour. Flour binds, but it also makes things chewy, so the goal is to need as little as possible. Baking drives water out of the potato instead of letting it soak more in, and ricing the flesh while it is still steaming means the starch granules are gelatinised and open, absorbing flour far more readily than cool ones do. Both moves cut the flour you need, and less flour is the entire difference between light and leaden.
Notes
- Test one before you shape the lot. If it disintegrates, work in another spoonful of flour.
- Freeze them raw on a tray, then bag them, and cook from frozen with an extra minute.
- The starchy cooking water is what emulsifies the butter into a sauce. Do not drain it all away.