Instructions

1. In a large stock pot boil potatoes with their skins on. The skins will protect the potatoes from getting water logged and mushy. Don’t over fill the pot with water just enough to cover the potatoes.  Depending on the size of the potatoes, it should be “about” 15-20 minutes of boiling. You want them to just be fork tender, no more, no less. Cooking them too long will make the potatoes too mushy to grate/rice.

2. Drain all of the water well. Remove potatoes. Allow them to cool for just a bit in a colander.

3. Peel the boiled potatoes. At this point it’s easily done by hand.

4. Now rice the potatoes. If you have a potato ricer use that. If not you can just use a grater. That’s what we did and it worked well.

5. Mound the grated potatoes on the middle of a large cutting board or on a very clean, dry countertop. Top with flour. Sprinkle with salt.

6. Using your hands, make a well by scooping out the center of your mound.

7. Drop the eggs into the center of the well. Whisk the egg with a fork.

8. Very gradually start pulling in the flour to the potato and egg mixture with the fork. Then begin to use your hands to really combine ingredients to form the dough. Make it a slow purposeful roll so you combine it but not over work the dough as you knead.  Don’t be tempted to keep adding flour at this point or it will give you dough that’s hard to work with and in turn, hard gnocchi. Eventually shape the dough into into large rectangular shape.

9. Then cut the rectangle into into 8-10 pieces of dough, about 4 inches long.

10. Roll each piece into a long rope by gently pushing softly with your fingers spread. Try to make an evenly sized ropes.

11. Using a sharp, non- serrated knife (a pastry cutter is quicker if you have one!) cut dough ropes into pieces. We cut into 1-inch pieces. You can play with various shapes and sizes but make the whole batch as uniform as possible so it cooks evenly.

12. To prevent sticking try to cook the gnocchi as soon as its made or at least keep it in a cool area. Be sure to toss them with a little extra flour while they’re waiting to be cooked. 

13. To cook, drop them gently into a large boiling pot of salted boiling water. If you have a hand strainer, that works great to drop them in without getting burned or smashing their shape. Cook gnocchi until they start floating. They shouldn’t take more than about 2-5 minutes so taste test after 2-3 minutes. Remove them from the water with a hand strainer or slotted spoon.

14. At this point there are lots of sauces and ways to prepare it. We immediately dropped them into a greased baking dish that had a layer of marinara sauce already down. (We preheated the sauce) After all the gnocchi was in the baking dish, we lightly tossed them with the sauce and with a cup of grated fresh parmesan cheese. We saved a little sauce for the top & topped that with fresh sliced mozzarella and fresh basil leaves-Then baked it off quickly until the cheese was melted and sauce was bubbling. About 10 minutes at 350.