Pan-fried potato gnocchi with crispy sage and browned butter

this is how i was finally able to enjoy gnocchi by frying them in their traditional browned butter sauce until golden they get a very crispy skin on them that's satisfying to bite through very tasty historically gnocchi are italian balls of miscellaneous starch bound into dumplings with egg and or cheese the version most popular among italian americans is flour and potato and even if you do the trick where you roll the dumpling across a fork to make lots of surface area on which sauce can cling i just think they taste like fluffy nothing so here's how i do it instead i'd say one large russet type potato for two portions of gnocchi that's about a one pound or half kilo floury potato stabbed maniacally so as to release steam while cooking i think the best way to get potato for gnocchi is to make baked potatoes for dinner the previous night but throw in an extra potato while you're at it just bake them until soft and squishy like an hour if you don't have a leftover baked potato you can just throw one in the microwave it only takes about 10 minutes in there for me to get it soft the flavor is not as good but at least it's drier than a boiled potato people do boil potatoes for gnocchi but drier potato is easier to mold into dumplings and the flavor from the baked potato is superior i think this is the baked one after it's cooled a sec i just pull the flesh out with my fingers this allows me to feel around for pieces like that that's a leathery bit of flesh from right next to the skin that had dried out we won't be able to smash that up smooth so get it out i just want the fluffy bits a ricer is a great tool for mashing this up but a fork is also fine just smoosh it until it's smooth and then i'm gonna make a little koi pond in the center where i'll put my egg just the egg yolk i'm making dinner for two and a whole egg would be too much too wet plus i think they do taste a little better when you only use yolk i say a pinch of salt per portion with dumplings this big i think the interior really does need at least a little seasoning plus some cheese on the inside this is pecorino that'll contribute some salt as well i'll just break up that yolk and then flour i think the common approach with flour and gnocchi is you put in as little as necessary to make this come together into a moldable dough i started with half a cup and ended up putting in about a full cup that's like 120 grams a lot of people emphasize working this as little as possible as soon as you put in the flour they want to keep their gnocchi soft minimize gluten development but i hate fluffy gnocchi they taste like baby food give me that chew plus for the pan frying method i'm going to show you you kind of need the gnocchi to be more solid if they're too soft they'll break apart in the pan there we go smooth not too sticky but still quite soft and squishy because of the potato it's still gonna be a dumpling not just a giant hunk of pasta this is easier to roll out and shape if you let it sit and let the flower hydrate for like 15 minutes i wish i had a drink oh i do check out june shine the sponsor of this video yes i'm advertising hard kombucha in a gnocchi video won't be the first time i baffle somebody's nona kombucha naturally wants to ferment into alcohol the makers here have simply decided to not fight it and you get a product that's about six percent alcohol like beer june is a kind of kombucha june shine like moonshine get it and they make all these creative flavors look at this crazy one that color is from activated charcoal surprisingly tasty this one is citrusy june shine is gluten free unlike beer there's no artificial colors there's syrups the ingredients are 100 organic and because it's kombucha it's filled with probiotics i mean it's still an alcoholic beverage but even putting aside the health stuff it's got this beautiful complex fermented flavor june shine is in a lot of stores here in the u.s now if you want to get a box like this in the mail it works out to like two dollars a can depending on how much you buy and you can get 20 off plus free shipping with my link in the description do us both the favor thank you joonshine now after a quick rest we're good to roll this out just roll it out into a snake when the snake gets too long cut it in half and keep rolling then the only trick to cutting these out into little pillows is to kick them away with the knife cut and kick cut and kick it's a dance craze the cut sides are extremely sticky and if two dumplings touch you'll never get them apart sounds like a parable roll out the other half and repeat this might not look like enough gnocchi for two people but this is a very heavy dinner especially with the browned butter no part of me wants to eat more than half of this and i'm not going to do the fork trick to give these pretty little ridges that would actually reduce the amount of browned surface that i could get on each dumpling i really don't care about the shape of these at all i just want bite-sized lumps of dough who cares if they're not all the same dimensions as long as they're all about the same size into a little pot of boiling water these go i do find i have to plop them in almost one at a time or else they'll stick to each other just give them a quick stir to make sure they're not sticking to the bottom and then i'll immediately throw a huge knob of butter into my non-stick pan and turn the heat on medium get it melting because these only take like two minutes to cook when they all float they're cooked enough especially because we're going to cook them a lot more in the pan i'll just drain those as dry as possible through the pot lid dry because we won't be able to brown them in here until we boil out the remaining water anyway you can do this in another kind of pan as long as you keep them moving constantly to keep them from sticking but the teflon makes it so much easier and you don't lose any crust to the bottom of the pan i've seen lots of cooks let their gnocchi brown a little in the butter i'm just taking it to the extreme when i've gotten some good color on these i'll throw in my sage totally traditional to do gnocchi and brown butter and sage i like to tear in whole leaves they fry beautifully crisp in the butter but sage is very strong don't do this unless you're sure you like sage i love it i need some more butter in there things are looking too dry once the sage leaves are crispy these are done i might give one a taste just to check for seasoning i'll toss a little more salt in there but once i get this on the plate i'm gonna cover it in grated pecorino which is very salty too i don't want the dumplings salty enough on their own if they were they'd be too salty those sage leaves are not just for garnish you gotta try eating them whole they have this delicious crumpling crispy pastry texture in the mouth now i'm not saying my gnocchi are objectively better than your nonas i'm just saying that we can all enjoy our own dinners more if we give ourselves permission to be honest with ourselves about what we like and deviate from tradition accordingly speaking of which i've had this weird idea that orange zest would be good in this orange and sage are often paired together with turkey and duck and such and yeah that is a phenomenal combination experimentation

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 798,303

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Id: 5kUo1dCzHOI

Length: 6min 12sec (372 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021