Homemade Gnocchi from leftover mashed potatoes

By á-49127

A delicious use of those cold, leftover mashed potatoes you have sitting in the fridge. You'll never make too few mashed potatoes again...

Ingredients

• 2 cups cold mashed potatoes
• 1 cup flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3/4 tsp. salt

Details

Adapted from theartofdoingstuff.com

Preparation

Step 1

Dump half of your flour onto your work surface. Dump your mashed potatoes onto the flour. Form a well in the potatoes and pour your egg in it. Add salt. Pour half the remaining flour (1/2 a cup) on top. Work the egg, salt and flour into the potatoes using either your hands or a pastry scraper.

Once everything is roughly incorporated, gently knead the dough like you would pasta for a couple of minutes. Do not over knead. At this point you can incorporate the rest of the flour if you need it. If the dough is still too sticky to handle or roll out, you need more flour. Again, be careful not to add too much flour, or your gnocchi will be dense and tough.

Divide your dough into workable pieces. Roll the dough out until it’s around 3/4 ” in diameter. Using your pastry cutter or a knife, cut the rope into lengths of 3/4″.

Now you have to decide how you want to shape your gnocchi. By pressing it with your thumb, or rolling it on a fork. To get the classic ribs on the gnocchi, roll each piece down the tines of a fork. It’s takes some practice, but you’ll get the hang of it. You aren’t just sliding it down the fork, you need to roll it down. Once you do it right the first time you’ll yell, “ah HAH!”. And then you’ll run outside to drag someone in to show them.

To make the thumbprint version, just poke your finger into the centre of the gnocchi. Both versions are fine. The reason you NEED to do one of these two methods is because it’s the ridges and the indent that helps holds whatever sauce you’re putting on them.

If you’re planning to freeze some gnocchi, lightly flour a baking sheet, place the gnocchi on it and freeze. Once frozen you can remove them from the pan and immediately put them in baggies or a widemouth mason jar. These then go back in the freezer. Work as quickly as possible so the gnocchi doesn’t have a chance to thaw out at all (because then they’ll stick to each other).

To cook your gnocchi, drop them in salted, boiling water. They’re done when they float. To make them even MORE delicious, pan fry them for a couple of minutes in butter and/or oil.