Easy Gnocchi Casserole Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Do I need to boil gnocchi before baking? ›

It comes together on a single baking sheet in right around 30 minutes. No boiling required!

There is no need to pre-cook the gnocchi. It'll cook in the sauce. The sauce is meant to be quite thick, but if you find it gets too dry before the gnocchi is cooked, add in another splash of chicken broth or wine.

The downside is that boiling can result in gummy, waterlogged gnocchi if you cook them too long. This is more of an issue when boiling store-bought gnocchi than with homemade ones. Frying gnocchi in a little butter or oil takes more effort, and the dumplings will be crisp on the outside, chewy and soft on the inside.

So instead of boiling or baking a package of gnocchi on a Wednesday night and wishing it tasted more like the pillowy homemade version, I broil it. Yep, that's right: I rip open one of those shelf-stable packages, toss the gnocchi with a tablespoon of olive oil, a lot of grated Parmesan cheese and a little bit of salt.

Don't overwork the dough: When making gnocchi dough, it's important not to overwork it. Overworking the dough can make the gnocchi tough and chewy. Mix the ingredients together just until the dough comes together, and then stop mixing! You're not kneading bread here.

A classic choice for saucing gnocchi is a simple combination of butter and sage, but the possibilities are endless. Simpler sauces like pesto, marinara and vodka are good choices, as are heartier sauces like Bolognese, cheese and cream sauces. Since gnocchi is fairly neutral in flavor, it pairs well with most anything.

Nutritional Value

Believe it or not, regular pasta is actually more carb-heavy than gnocchi, coming in at around 2 times the amount of carbs per serving. Gnocchi is also notorious for having a lot more sodium, with over 200 grams of it per serving. Regular pasta doesn't have nearly as high of a sodium content.

If the gnocchi fall apart or appear to be fraying at the edges, it can mean one of two things: You let them cook for too long or, even worse, you didn't combine the potato and flour into true dough. In the latter case, it's back to square one.

How do you know when gnocchi is done in the oven? ›

Roast, stirring once or twice, until gnocchi are golden and starting to crisp, most of the tomatoes have burst, and onion is golden, 25–30 minutes.

How to prepare gnocchi. Poach gnocchi in batches in a pan of lightly salted water for 2-4 minutes. Cooked gnocchi will float to the top. Strain and serve immediately with a good pasta sauce.

(To re-hydrate, most packages recommend boiling the gnocchi for about three minutes before saucing, topping, and eating.) This low hydration might be responsible for what the San Francisco Chronicle called the “too firm” texture, but for many recipe developers, it's gnocchi's superpower.

Are there alternative methods to boiling store-bought gnocchi? Yes, there are alternative cooking methods for store-bought gnocchi. You can sauté them in a pan with a little olive oil or butter until they turn golden brown on the outside. This method creates a slightly crispy texture while keeping the inside soft.

The basic ingredient of store-bought gnocchi is, of course, potatoes, which in this case are precooked. But in addition there are various raw flours and/or starches, such as rice, wheat, corn, and potato. These latter are inedible when uncooked from the standpoint of both digestibility and safety.