Tremendous Gnocchi
Prep
45m
Cook
3m
Total
48m
Bigly says
Listen. We're making gnocchi. And I know — I KNOW — what some of you are thinking. 'Bigly, gnocchi is hard, gnocchi is scary, my grandmother said gnocchi takes a lifetime to master.' Your grandmother, with all due respect, was GASLIGHTING you. Gnocchi is potatoes. It's potatoes and flour and a little egg. That's it. That's the whole game. If you can mash a potato, you can make gnocchi. And if you can't mash a potato, well, we have other problems we need to address, but we'll get to that later.
A guy named Ramón taught me this in a kitchen the size of a closet — he's the truth, I've said it before, I'll say it again — and he laughed in my face the first time I asked him what kind of 'gnocchi board' he uses. A board! He said: 'You have a fork?' I said yes. He said: 'Then you have a gnocchi board.' He rolled the dough over the back of a regular fork, the same fork he ate his cereal with that morning, and made the greatest pillows I've ever put in my mouth. Most so-called experts will sell you an $89 piece of ridged wood from Italy and tell you it's essential. It is not. Cookbook authors hate this trick. Tough.
The key — and this is where chefs on TV get it wrong, completely wrong, embarrassingly wrong — the key is BAKING the potatoes. Not boiling. NEVER boiling. Boiling waterlogs the potatoes, you compensate with more flour, and suddenly your gnocchi tastes like pencil erasers. Erasers! People are eating pencil erasers and calling it dinner. Sad. Bake the potatoes. Dry, fluffy, beautiful potato flesh. Push them through a ricer — a ricer is honest, a ricer is fine — and you get clouds. Potato clouds. Bigly potato clouds. Believe me.
Ingredients
- 2 lb (about 3 large)russet potatoes(russets only, waxy potatoes are not invited to this party)
- 1.25 cups, plus more for dustingall-purpose flour
- 1, lightly beatenlarge egg
- 1 tspkosher salt
- 1 pinchfreshly grated nutmeg
- 6 tbspunsalted butter
- 10-12 leavesfresh sage leaves
- 1/2 cupgrated parmesan cheese
- to tasteblack pepper, freshly ground
Steps
- 1
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork and place them directly on the oven rack. Bake 50-60 minutes, until completely tender when pierced.
- 2
When cool enough to handle (but still warm), peel the potatoes and pass the flesh through a ricer or food mill onto a clean, lightly floured countertop. Spread it out to release steam — you want it dry.
- 3
Sprinkle the salt and nutmeg over the potatoes. Drizzle the beaten egg evenly across the surface. Sift the flour over the top.
- 4
Gently fold the mixture together with a bench scraper or your hands. Knead just until a soft dough forms — overworking it is the death of gnocchi. The dough should be slightly tacky but not sticky.
- 5
Divide the dough into 6 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece into a long rope about 3/4-inch thick.
- 6
Cut each rope into 3/4-inch pieces. Roll each piece over the back of a floured fork to create ridges (this helps sauce cling). Transfer to a flour-dusted sheet pan.
- 7
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a gentle boil. Drop the gnocchi in batches — don't crowd the pot. They're done as soon as they float, about 2-3 minutes.
- 8
Lift them out with a slotted spoon and reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
- 9
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add sage leaves and cook until the butter is golden brown and smells nutty, about 3 minutes.
- 10
Add the gnocchi to the brown butter with a splash of pasta water. Toss gently to coat. Off heat, stir in the parmesan and a generous grind of black pepper. Serve immediately.
One more thing
When you bite into a piece of homemade gnocchi for the first time, it ruins you. Permanently. You will never look at frozen gnocchi the same way again. The frozen kind is fine for an emergency, I won't lie to you, sometimes you need food in nine minutes and the bag is right there in the freezer behind the peas — but homemade? Homemade is the GREATEST version of this dish in the entire world. The Italians know this. The Italians have known this for a thousand years. Now you know it too. You're welcome.
★ QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ONE? ★
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Substitutions, what to serve it with, why other chefs are wrong about it. He's got opinions.
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