Categories: Pasta

Ingredients

• 1 medium to large sweet potatoes, peeled, boiled
• 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• Pinch of salt
• Sauce:
• 1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
• 3-4 tablespoons fresh basil
• 1 clove garlic
• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Start by peeling your sweet potatoes and cut them into large 2 inch cubes. Also, get a large pot of salted water boiling (I use about 1 Tablespoon of kosher salt per gallon of water).

2. Drop these chunks of potatoes straight into the water and let them cook until they are very tender, about 20 minutes.

3. The key to making these gnocchi light is to ultimately add as little flour as possible to the dough. That means that you need to draw out as much water as possible from the cooked potatoes. After cooking, I suggest moving the potatoes to a bowl lined with paper towels which will soak up a lot of water. Let them rest for a few minutes.

4. Then add your dried potatoes to a much larger bowl and mush them up with a fork. No need to bust out the mixer or anything. These mash much easier than normal potatoes. I tried to spread my potatoes out because they need to cool completely before we continue with the recipe.

5. Once your sweet potatoes have cooled to at least room temperature (sticking them in the fridge for 30 minutes would be a good call), add your one egg and mix it well. Then slowly add your flour, 1/4 of a cup at a time, until the dough starts to come together.

6. timately, you want something that is very soft, but manageable. Something like loose Play-Doh. I ended up adding about 1.5 Cups flour to my dough. Knowing how much flour to add is where experience comes in. If you just follow the recipe you might end up with gnocchi that don’t hold together or are hard as rock.

7. To form the gnocchi, take about 1/6 of the dough and add it to a well floured surface. Turn it around to coat it completely in flour and then start slowly rolling it into a long snake.

8. Be gentle here people. Try to get it as even a thickness as possible. You’re going for about the thickness of your thumb. Going slowly, I was able to roll mine out to about an 18 inch string of sweet potato awesomeness. Again, you don’t want to add too much flour to the outside of the dough, but if it’s sticking don’t be afraid to sprinkle more down.

9. Once you get the rope of gnocchi to the right width, chop it into 1/2 inch sections!

10. Now. If you are doing a lazy man’s homemade gnocchi (is there such a thing?) you can just cook these as is, but if you want them to have a more traditional feel, you need to add the gnocchi ridges.

11. Take each little gnocchi nugget and roll it gently over the tines of a fork. The dough should be very soft and it won’t take much pressure to leave the impressions of the fork on the gnocchi.

12. Once you make the ridges, set the gnocchi on a very lightly floured baking sheet while you do the others.

13. If I had to guess, I would say this recipe makes easily 100 gnocchi. Probably more. I never got into a perfect groove with my grooves.

14. Cooking these guys couldn’t be easier once you have them made. Just add as many as you need to a pot of simmering, water. A rolling boil will destroy your work! When they float, they are done!

15. The photo at the beginning of this post is the version I made with the marinara (I simmered it for 5 minutes in a sauce pan just to heat it up and reduce it very slightly). It was good but the marinara definitely over powered the sweet potatoes. I might suggest just a drizzle of olive oil or maybe just eating them naked (the gnocchi, not you).

16. Gnocchi that you don’t eat immediately can be frozen for later. Just freeze them on the baking sheet and when they are completely frozen you can store them in a plastic bag for weeks without a problem. No need to thaw before cooking. Just add them straight to the boiling water.

17. However, if you can spare the calories, browned butter is the only way to go. Just toss the gnocchi into the browned butter when they float! If you need help with your browned butter sauce, check out this post.

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