The Best Potato Gnocchi with a Golden Butter Sauce

It is hard to say the joy that this brings me when I'm cooking something that I love to cook. It just makes me so incredibly happy. I think I'm happy because it came together and actually worked, first of all, but also I love the flavors. Scott here. All right, we're gonna make some potato gnocchi. I am particularly proud of this gnocchi recipe because it has never steered me wrong. Think about all those times that you've had those big, heavy, flour-laden potato bombs sitting in your stomach. That's not this gnocchi. This is the way to go. All right, so this is what we do. We got these potatoes. These are a russet Idaho potato. I really like this because of the lack of water on the interior. There's also not too much sugar inside these potatoes. If I were to use a Yukon potato, for example, the texture is completely different. I like that for a potato puree. I don't like those Yukon potatoes for potato gnocchi. Russet potatoes, for me, are the way to go for a potato gnocchi. That's why we use them. We're just gonna poke some holes in it to make sure that that hot air gets all the way through. I'm gonna pop this in an oven for about an hour at 350 degrees. All right, so with this potato gnocchi, the potatoes are in the oven baking. I have one and one third cups of double zero flour. I have a little bit more double zero flour here as a bench flour. I have two eggs that we will use just the yolks inside here. We don't want too much liquid. We don't wanna add more liquid. That's the reason why I'm not boiling these potatoes. A lot of people boil potatoes for gnocchi. That makes more liquid, clearly, inside the potato. I wanna avoid that. That's why we're baking them. We will take those baked potatoes, cut them in half, and then press them through this tammy. It's what I do when I'm fencing normally. This is called the tammy, and we press the potato directly through this, and then use that puree on the other side. I'm gonna pull these potatoes out of the oven, cut them in half, and then we're gonna run them right through the tammy. I really like to work with them while they're hot. It's gonna be much easier to deal with. Move these just to the side, and this is a single recipe. We go through quite a bit of this gnocchi in the restaurant, so this is how I do it. I press it down, and you see that breaking of the skin. So we're just pressing these right through the tammy, just like that. Let me show you. There's really no potato left on the skin also. You can have a little potato on it if you want, but for the most part, we're pressing all that potato directly through the tammy, through that screen, and utilizing the potato underneath. You see that perfect texture of the potato here. Get all the rest of this through using this bench scraper. Look at that, and you can see how fluffy this is. I'm gonna add some egg yolk to this. Take the white out. Like I said, I wanna make this as dry as possible. Okay, good. Two yolks. So I'm gonna add this flour, sifting the flour over the top of that. Little bit of salt, kosher salt here. If you don't wanna add salt, you don't have to add salt. Everybody tells me it's too much salt. All right, you don't have to use it. I'm using it. Finish it with the rest of this flour. We're good to go. I have some boiling salted water in the back. Now, there's a reason why I always check this gnocchi before I actually finish making all of it. I wanna make a little bit, use it as a sample, and then start to test it a little bit. Years ago, I always tell this story every time I make gnocchi, and I think about this story whenever I make gnocchi. I had a guy who worked with me for 25 years. His name was Chepi. God bless him. I love Chepi. I miss him. I haven't seen him in a while. Chepi had made gnocchi one day, and he didn't test it. And of course, that was the night that William Grimes, the critic from the New York Times, came into the restaurant. So I was, of course, frantic as one would be when the New York Times is inside your restaurant, and I ran over to the pasta station. I took the gnocchi, the fresh gnocchi that Chepi had made, and I put it inside the pasta water, and immediately it dissipated completely inside that water. And I was panicked, obviously, like, what am I gonna do? The New York Times is here. They ordered gnocchi. What I did was I cooked all the gnocchi, and then I chose all the bits that actually worked, just enough for one portion. The reason why I always do this is to make sure that that gnocchi doesn't dissipate in the water when I'm making it. God bless you, Chepi. I love you. I have a story for the rest of my life now every time I make gnocchi. I have a little bit of bench flour here also. I'm just gonna put this down. This is how I do it. So what I like to do is line them up just like this, and then I'm gonna add a little flour to the top of them so when I cut them, they don't stick. See how I got them all lined up just like that? This is what I do. I cut them on the bias, little bit of a diamond shape to them. If you wanted a larger gnocchi, you could take it and run it across this, a pallet like that, and so you have that texture on the exterior where the sauce gathers, or you could use the back of a fork like this also, which is another opportunity there, right? I just kind of like these little gnocchetti just like that. They're beautiful. All right, I'm gonna drop this in the water. This is the sample. This is the tester. So this started floating almost right away. So as soon as that starts floating like that, I'm gonna give it another moment, and I'm gonna toss it right in this butter sauce. Look at that. Beautiful. See how that cooks up nicely? I'm moving them like this because this is the way I'm gonna cook them in the tomato sauce and butter. So I wanna make sure that they don't break up when I have some kind of vigorous movement on them. All right, what do you think, man? I want you to taste this, brother. Get in there. See, you tell me. You think that that texture is right? That's good, right? That's not like a gnocchi you've had before. It's so light. It's so light, you get the potato. The potato really shines through. See the difference in what we're talking about? That's good. He is not a paid actor, by the way. I mean, not today. All right, so back to this dough. I'm gonna cover this dough with a towel so it doesn't dry out, and I will cut off a little piece and I'll continue to make these gnocchi. I like to help myself out a little bit. It's already basically in the shape we need it to be when I cut it. So they're already long. I just need to make them a little thinner. And you could see how I'm stretching this out, getting it to the thickness, the desired thickness, and then we'll cut them into those little diamonds all over again. I'm gonna take some of this tomato sauce and start to reduce it a little bit. This is our signature pomodoro sauce from Martone Street. I'm just gonna put about half of the jar in here for that gnocchi, and I'm gonna reduce it down by about half as well. So super low flame because I'm gonna be cutting these gnocchi for a little while. I want them to be as consistent as I can. This is gnocchi, but I call it gnocchetti. Gnocchetti are a little smaller than a gnocchi, that's all. I always say that the more vowels we use in an Italian restaurant, the more we get to charge, that's all. So it's a more elegant version of a gnocchi, gnocchetti, but you can make these larger if you feel like it. When you think of elegant, think of me, Scott Conant. All right, so a couple of things before we get into this cooking of the gnocchi, the potato gnocchi. I wanna talk about a little bit about gnocchi in general and the categorization of it. So gnocchi is a category. Potato gnocchi is a type of gnocchi. Ricotta gnocchi is another one. Nudie is another kind of category of a ricotta dumpling. So if you wanna see me cook gnocchi or any ricotta gnocchi, nudie, any of those things, comment below, I'd love to hear from you to see what you'd like me to cook. I have some basil here that we're gonna cut up. And, you know, a lot of people like to chiffonade it. I've kind of changed my thought process on this over the years, and I'm just gonna kind of rough chop it a little bit into nice little chunks. Look at that, and that's it. And when you're cutting basil, really important thing to point out, use that knife to kind of saw at it a touch as opposed to just pressing down on it. And what you'll end up with is something that's not bruised. And as it sits for a couple moments, if it's bruised, it'll start to turn black on that cut point. And if you just kind of saw at it nicely, and any of your soft herbs are the same, it's not gonna turn black. And so just a little tip, professional tip from Shkadi. Let's get this gnocchi inside the water. So I'm gonna add this gnocchi to the pasta water. That's inside there. Basil is cut, butter's ready to go. I got the parmigiano, which we will add off the fire. Whenever you add Parmesan cheese to a pasta, do not let it see any more heat. You see how I paused like that, that pregnant pause? Because I want that to land properly. I say that because if you've ever made pasta and you add Parmesan cheese and keep cooking it, you notice that you have the parm kind of cooked into the bottom of the pan. And I hate having to wash that pot. I mean, honestly. It's also, you're losing kind of the point of adding that cheese to add that creamy texture to it. So, and as soon as it starts to float, I wanna start to move it around a little bit. There's a lot of gnocchi in there. Oh, that's nice. Look at that. All right, so a little bit of draining that liquid. Look at that. Look, look at what we're doing. That is delicious. It is hard to say the joy that this brings me when I'm cooking something that I love to cook. It happens to me every time. It just makes me so incredibly happy. I think I'm happy because it came together and actually worked, first of all, but also I love the flavors. A little extra virgin olive oil in there. I'm gonna add a little bit of butter to this. Watch the color change. It starts to become that nice orangey color as opposed to that deep red. While that's going, I have this basil. When you're adding these things to the pan, you can discern the flavor profiles as you're tasting them. The basil's almost the last thing you put in the pan. That'll be the second flavor that you're tasting if you do it the right way. So I wanna make sure that that basil and the perfume of that is in there. Look at that nice texture of that sauce. So I'm gonna add the Parmesan cheese directly to this. Like I said, off the fire. And I'll toss it one more time. Look at that. That's what I'm talking about. Beautiful. If I added more liquid to it, that's fine too. But I really like the way this is kind of sitting in the sauce just like that right now. And then it's as simple as going to plate. As we say in my country, forget about it. Look at that. Beautiful. That just makes me happy. All right. Let's see. You get that cheese. You get that beautiful perfume of basil. That sweet acidity of the tomato. It's kind of rounded out nicely by the butter. Everything's coming together nicely. Like I said, all those flavors are singular but also simple flavors that are harmonious together. All right. You guys got to come in here and taste this. Get in here. Don't be shy. I know you're not shy. Good. Well, I hope you like it most importantly. Yeah. It'd be a hell of a thing if you didn't like it at all. It is so creamy without being heavy. It's so light. Again, simple, happy flavors that work together. Thank you. I mean, may I? That's good stuff.