Recipe: Gluten-Free Gnocchi

When I decided to go gluten-free a few years back, I was committed to the decision to remove all foods with gluten from my diet and had little remorse. There are a handful of foods I miss (out of jealousy, I cross out the Cheez-It pictures in the weekly grocery store ad) and gnocchi is one of the main ones. I never thought making gnocchi gluten-free would be as simple as substituting gluten-free flour for glutinous flour, but it turns out it is! 

I loved this recipe because the gnocchi had a great texture and flavor, we had all the ingredients in our house already, and it was super simple! You could easily make a double or triple batch and have leftovers for weeks. Here's the recipe we used, and enjoyed, last night.

Gluten-Free Gnocchi

What you'll need:

• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
• 1 egg, whisked
• 1 1/3 cup gluten-free flour (I used King Aurthur's)
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated finely
• Salt and pepper

What you'll do:

1. Steam the potatoes for 15 minutes (or until tender). Use a steaming pan to make sure the potatoes don't touch the water as you don't want them to absorb the liquid*.
2. Mash the cooked potatoes with salt and pepper.
3. Mash in the egg.
4. Mash in half of the flour and half of the Parmesan cheese.
5. Slowly mash in the remaining flour and Parmesan cheese until you have a dough.
6. Knead the dough on a lightly-floured surface until it's smooth (about two minutes).
7. Break off small portions of dough (just a tad larger than a marble) and gently roll each into a ball. If you roll them too big, they won't cook properly and will taste doughy. We learned the hard way.
8. Set them off to the side until you have prepared all the dough. 
9. Press each dough ball gently into a fork.
10. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil and place the gnocchi into the water to cook for about three minutes (they will all be floating at the top when they are cooked).

*Instead of a steaming pan you could put a small amount of water at the bottom of a pan and balance a colander over it for the same effect.

Andy with the dough ball. So excited!

Half the gnocchis pressed, waiting to be cooked.

We ate our gnocchi with a pesto-marinara sauce and great northern beans.

We both really enjoyed the recipe and will add it to our regular rotation for dinners! Next time I'll add in some garlic powder to the dough for additional flavor. Also, we only cooked half of them and froze the other half for later. That was plenty of food for two of us (with one of us being 6'4" with a hefty appetite!). 

Let me know what you think if you try it out! 

-Breanna