4 Levels of Gnocchi: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hi, I'm Billy, and I'm a level one chef. I'm Beth, and I'm a level two chef. Hi, I'm Saul. I've been a professional chef for the past 23 years. Gnocchi gets full marks for me because it's like the most unique pasta you could find on the shelf. The best gnocchi, I think, is very soft and pillowy. It's like a pillow, like a little cloud full of love. Fluffy, fluffy's the key. The most important part of making a gnocchi, it's the potato. Store-bought gnocchi, I think, is a no-no. I am using store-bought gnocchi. It's fine. There's more important things that you could spend your time and energy on. Let the experts make the gnocchi. So, preparing my gnocchi is pretty simple. If you could stick with me on this one, you have to take the package, right? And then you open it, and you take the gnocchi out. I'm gonna be making my gnocchi out of russet potatoes, but I'm also gonna add a little bit of sweet potato. It's okay for you to give a little twist. Otherwise, it's not me. So, the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to wash my russet potatoes, and then I'm going to pierce them with a knife. Just a little bit of salt. Let's put this potato to sleep. The reason why I'm doing this is because the salt will suck all the moist out of it. The more moist your potato is, the more flour you're gonna need. And if you add more flour, they won't be as fluffy. Little aggressive, but fun. So, now I'm gonna bake these at 420 for an hour, hour and 15 minutes. I'm gonna put them right on the middle rack of a 425-degree oven for about 45 minutes. To the oven. Into the bowl, out of the package. Everybody looks nice and discreet. Nobody's sticking together. They look perfecto. Little warm. What I like to do is cut them in half while they're hot. I don't peel them when they're hot. I don't wanna burn my hands. Just gonna let them cool a couple of minutes, and then I'm gonna scoop them out. Now this, we're just gonna squeeze it. Look how easily. To make a fluffy gnocchi, you need a razor. If you have chunks like this, you're gonna have to smash the crap out of them, and you're gonna have a no fluffy gnocchi. So, that's the reason why I'm using a razor, because it makes my life easier. Oh my goodness! You do this because you love somebody. That's why you do this. So listen, this is a very important part. Working the dough. We don't want to overwork the dough. Gonna make a little hole. Just gonna beat up these two eggs. Gonna pour it right over the potatoes. And I'm not gonna mix it hard with my hands. Just gonna use this scraper to kinda get everything all mixed together. Now I'm going to sift the flour right on top of the potatoes. This is double O flour. Double O flour is finer than all purpose flour. We're gonna be adding semolina as we go. It's a high quality flour. It has like a nutty flavor. I'm looking for everything to be combined. I don't want to see large patches of flour. Look at this. It's just like making a masa, playing with dough. What's better than that? Everything looks pretty well combined to me, so I'm gonna form this into a loaf. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to cut pieces off and roll the gnocchi. We're not doing a regular gnocchi. What we're doing right now is stuffed gnocchi. This is what's gonna get a little tricky. Remember, I'm a professional and I like to complicate my life. I'm making the gnocchi shell. Now this is very delicate. It's like making cookies, potato cookies. You want the pieces to be about an inch. You don't really have to put ridges on your gnocchi, but then they don't look like gnocchi. I like the ridges. I don't have anything fancy. Just use the back of the fork and there's your ridge. We're not done yet. There's more. I'm gonna put a little bit of taleggio, which is creamy and funky. I love the funkiness of this cheese, and mozzarella. This is what I wish my kids were here so they can do all the gnocchi. So we're gonna do this 300 times. And this is why you pay so much money in the restaurants. This is a weekend meal because it's a little time consuming, but it's absolutely worth it. I like making this weeknights. Most recently, I made this when my mom came over. I kind of wanted to show that like, yeah, I'm doing fine. Got my own kitchen, making gnocchi. You don't have to worry about me anymore. We've got a pretty full tray of gnocchi. And six hours later, 14 pieces of gnocchi. Time to make the pesto sauce. The gnocchi I'm making today, I call it a ballpark gnocchi. Basically, it's taking all those great flavors of a sausage and pepper hero and transposing them onto gnocchi. So I'm gonna prep the peppers and onions. Gonna slice them kind of thin, not so thin that they dissolve into nothing by the time they're done being cooked, but not so thick that they're still crunchy by the time they get out of the oven. You want them to give like the squishy hero that I'm trying to approximate. What do you think? Not bad, right? So we are slicing these onions, you know, as thin as I can as a layman. You get these guys and they're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I'm just gonna be bleeding all over the place. Kidding me? I liked that one scene in the unnamed Disney movie about the rat chef. This has always stuck with me. She's like, you have to keep your arms tight. Keep your hands close so that you don't cut yourself. Ever since I saw that cartoon, I keep my arms nice and tight. And that, friends, is the majority of my culinary education. The garlic, we're gonna crush. In you go. This pesto sauce is special because I'm gonna use pistachios instead of pine nuts. And I'm also gonna use arugula. First thing I do is take a nice handful of arugula. Nice bunch of basil. In go the pistachios. I want three cloves of garlic. I like it garlicky. I'm gonna do the zest and the juice of one whole lemon. There we go. That lemon was fighting with me, but I won. Kosher salt, nice fresh ground pepper. Pecorino Romano cheese. And don't be stingy. What I wanna do now is just grind everything up. And then I'm gonna pour in the oil until I get my sauce. We're making a sauce inspired by spring. I want to keep this sauce light and very flavorful. To start making my sauce, I'm gonna prep all my vegetables. Porcini to me is the king of the mushrooms. Look at this beauty. Don't you wanna see this on your plate? I wanna see this on my plate. How are we going to slice this asparagus? We're gonna try to use the same size of the porcini. Why, chef? Because we want this to cook at the same time. Now, I'm gonna do my shallots. I don't think they're as strong as a regular onion. They're more delicate. Plus, shallots are beautiful and they're just like me, cute and sweeter. Well, sometimes. If it's a Friday night, I'm not sweet at all. I'm more like a jalapeno. Now, one more best part of spring, rums. Rums is basically an onion with a garlic taste. So we're gonna cut this in half, in half, and that's it. I think we're gonna leave this like that. Tell me that this doesn't look pretty already. So I've got two kinds of sausage here, sweet and hot Italian sausage in the same package. I am going to open these up and crumble them in to the onions and peppers and kind of make a salad of sorts to put on. That sounds awful. Yeah, that's looking just about right. A little bit of sazon, and I mean a little bit. We're gonna go with a quarter teaspoon and it's got this luxurious orange color. It's gonna add a attractive hue to the final product. And just to keep things moving along, a little bit of EVOO. Okay, time to make some sauce. But before that, we need to make sure the wine tastes good. No, I'm kidding, that's later. I'm gonna start with medium heat because I don't wanna burn these mushrooms. I just wanna give nice color. So I'm gonna throw a little bit of butter and we're gonna add the rum. Little shallots. Asparagus, we're gonna put it almost in the end because I want to keep the color of the asparagus nice and green. Mira, mira, mira. Oh la la. Little bit of pepper. Little bit of green peas. Little bit of vino. Now, before moving forward, let's try it. Oh, it needs a little bit more salt. That's really good. Get this pesto into a bowl. This sauce is ready for its gnocchi. In goes the gnocchi now for the final incorporation. Everything is rubbing up against everybody else, getting to know each other. Didn't you go to Central High School? I thought we had biology together. Oh, that's right, I thought I recognized you. How is everything? Good, wow, you lost weight. I know, I was a real chunk in high school. Anyway. My sauce looks amazing. Let's get the gnocchi in. Everything is ready to go in this bowl. The idea is to spread it into an even layer on the pan and let it sizzle up and cook in the oven. I'm gonna just give that a generous cracking of fresh black pepper. And we got some red pepper here as well. I'm gonna put that on. It's so nice. Reds and yellows and blacks. I'm gonna pop it all into an oven that's heated up to 450. Let it go for about 10, 15 minutes. Time to cook the gnocchi. My water is boiling. Good handful of kosher salt. I'm gonna season my water just a little bit of salt. Gonna put some of my pesto into a smaller container. So I'm gonna add some of this water to the pesto just to thin it out so it's kind of sauce-like. So I'm adding all the gnocchis at once. Putting them right in the water. As soon as the gnocchi come to the top, they're done. Let's go, my friends. We're just waiting for you. I will say three to four minutes. All right, we are back out of the oven and this looks fantastic. I'm just gonna put it in the broiler for like 90 seconds to crisp everything up and it's ready to serve. They're starting to dance in the water. They just jump right up. I'm done, I'm done. They're watching my kids learn how to swim. But you don't have to worry about them, just let them have fun. Okay, you're having too much fun already. That's one. Gonna put a little of the sauce in the bottom of the dish. Fish them out gently. My house, this is one serving. Now we're just cooking in the sauce. I want every single gnocchi to have the same amount of love, a.k.a. butter. This is exactly what the concourse at Yankee Stadium smells like when you're walking up to the Sausage and Peppers Pagoda. Perfect. Literally salivating smelling this. Like Pavlov, or no, the dogs, because Pavlov ran the experiment. Now it's time to plate. You might notice that this dish kind of looks all thrown together, so you don't have to be too considerate about the plating. Isn't that nice? There we go. That looks like a hearty helping. And now, we'll get some sauce right on the top. A little sprinkle of Pecorino Romano makes everything better. Let's get our hands dirty. This beautiful ramp, I'm gonna make a bed of vegetables, so my gnocchis can take a nap. Let's put enough sauce in all of them. Now I'm gonna put some Parmigiano. And since we're dealing with spring, right? What's in spring? A lot of flowers. These are edible flowers, so you can eat them. So nice. This is my gnocchi. And this is my gnocchi with pesto sauce. And this is my gnocchi a la primavera. The onions are caramelized. Peppers are colorful, but soft. Looks delicious. I can't wait to taste it. It looks like spring. It looks like the cold days are over, and we're ready for the hot days. Dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Yes, yes! The gnocchi tastes like sausage and peppers. You understand how great that is? Each gnocchi, separate, light, and lovely. It literally melts in your mouth. You don't have to chew it at all. Delicious. The gnocchi itself is nice and fluffy, like me. Sweet potato add that level of sweetness, but without being too sweet. Now I know why I'm being called a professional. I know it's not the prettiest. I know it's not the fanciest. And certainly, not the most homemade. But gosh darn it, if it doesn't taste delicious. Gnocchi are a savory cross between pasta and dumplings, with potato as the main ingredient. Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs. Bill used commercial pre-made gnocchi. They contain potato starch, which has mono and diglycerides added to emulsify, or hold together the other ingredients like mashed potatoes and wheat flour. They also include potassium sorbate, a preservative that extends shelf life and reduces molding. Because of these additives, these gnocchi don't require boiling. Beth made a traditional gnocchi with roasted russet potatoes. These mealy potatoes break down into individual cells that bond with the starches in the flour and hold together perfectly. She also used egg yolks, which contain emulsifiers such as lecithin and acetylcholine. These aid in holding the ingredients together to make a light, airy, cohesive little dumpling. Saul added sweet potato to his russets. Sweet potatoes are orange from beta-carotene and other carotenoid pigments like neoxanthin, zeaxanthin, and their oxygenated derivatives, xanthophylls. They're also starchy and fibrous, but higher in sugars than russets. So they add a sweet note that's highlighted after roasting. Saul also used durum, a hard winter wheat, which means it's higher in gluten proteins and gave his gnocchi a slightly chewier quality. Durum is the wheat used for making commercial pasta. It's more golden because, like the sweet potato, it's high in carotenoids. Billy baked his gnocchi with peppers, which added color and some slight sweetness. He minced his garlic, maximizing surface area and flavor extraction. When garlic is roasted, it browns beautifully due to the higher concentration of fructose, a simple sugar that caramelizes quickly. Beth kept it traditional and made pesto. She added basil, which has unique flavor from compounds such as eugenol, quercetin, and caffeic, vanillic, and rosmarinic acids. That's my favorite acid. Arugula is peppery and pungent from various aldehydes, including benzaldehyde, which is associated with almond flavor. Olive oil holds the pesto together, and the lemon juice is a nice acid, but also serves to improve the green color from the chlorophyll A in the pesto and arugula. Saul used butter and white wine to make a spring-themed sauce, which included mushrooms, asparagus, peas, and ramps. Ramps resemble a cross between a scallion and a leek in looks and flavor, and have an exceptionally short growing season in springtime. Gnocchi is the type of dish you can eat every day and mix it up with different potatoes or sauces. We hope you'll take some of these tips from our three fabulous chefs.