Mmm gnocchi. When you get it right, gnocchi are such a delicious meal. They are super light, fluffy and delicate little dumplings. They can take a little practice to make, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll love it. Plus, everyone will be so impressed when you say you made them from scratch. Gnocchi is usually made with either ricotta cheese or potato, my dough today was made from the latter.

I made this recipe that I found online (gnocchi recipe) which was super simple and used only sweet potato*, salt and flour. It’s important to add the flour slowly and just mix until the dough comes together. You don’t want to overwork the mixture because then your gnocchi will be tough. Notes: make sure you have enough flour on your work surface because the dough can be sticky otherwise. Also, sprinkle gnocchi with little flour after cutting into pieces – this will keep them from sticking to each other.

While I was waiting for the water to boil (to cook the gnocchi), I prepared the sauteed spinach. I pretty much followed the recipe for the spinach that is in the gnocchi recipe, but I stopped before processing it (I kept the spinach/onion/garlic mix chunky and did not add the cream). I just thought it would be nice to have the sauteed veggies and give more texture to the dish. Once that was ready, I put it off to the side and kept it warm.

After that, all that was left to do was boil the little gnocchi. I boiled them in 2 batches and it took about 3 minutes per batch. You want to take them out when they are floating and they should look a little bigger/fluffy. I just put some of the spinach mixture in my bowl and put some gnocchi on top and just mixed it together to look nice for the picture. I also sprinkled a little salt and pepper on top at the end, but a little parmesan would be great too.

This was an awesome meal and I’m so excited because there were leftovers that I get to eat for lunch tomorrow 🙂

*Gnocchi requires mashed potato and the method I found was incredible. Instead of boiling the potatoes in water, I baked them whole (with skin) in the oven – 400 degrees for 40ish minutes. It definitely takes longer than boiling but they come out super sweet and creamy. It was hard to believe that a potato was this sweet without any added sugar. The skin comes over very easily and I was able to mashed it up with a spoon.