Gnocchi is a tough dish to make for the inexperienced cook. These bits of potato are supposed to be soft and light, but they often come out tasting overcooked and heavy.
Not everyone can manage to make them properly the first time or even the first 10 times.
The soft and doughy pasta can be made out of any number of foods- cornmeal, flour, egg, potato, and more- and they can be used like any pasta.
You can cover them in pasta sauce, serve them with cheese, and season them the same way you would other types of pasta.
Making them come out perfect when you create them from scratch is tricky, so I want to tell you about a different kind of gnocchi that is easier to make- Parisian gnocchi.
Like the name suggests, this is a French version of the dish, made famous in the city of Paris.
Of course, Paris is known for its fine foods, so it’s no surprise that they would have a different way to make gnocchi than what other places around the world would use.
Maybe you have never heard of gnocchi before or you looked up a recipe once after hearing about it or trying it and then were scared off of attempting to make it.
If you have made gnocchi properly, it will be slightly crispy on the outside and soft and pillowy in the center. It will be an airy food, not heavy and thick.
Getting it just right is important to the dish, because a heavy pasta isn’t nearly as delightful as a light one, and the best potato dishes are all light and fluffy on the inside.
This isn’t a food you want to try to “wing it” on and see how it turns out.
Parisian Gnocchi Recipe
What makes Parisian gnocchi different from regular gnocchi comes down the proportions of ingredients and some of the ingredients themselves.
The process to make it is actually identical to traditional gnocchi, so if you know how to make that, then you have Parisian gnocchi down as well. If not, then that’s not a problem- I will show you how to make it.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of water
- 3 large eggs
- 8 tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
- 1 ¼ cups of flour
- ¾ teaspoon of kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons of sliced chives
- ½ cup of parmesan cheese
- 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley leaves
- Olive oil
Directions:
- Mix together the salt, butter don water in a pan and cook them over high heat.
- Add in the flour all together, not little by little, and combine using a wooden spoon. When it is mixed properly, your mixture will become a smooth dough.
- Lower the heat to medium and keep on stirring. If the dough starts to stick to the sides of the pot, you can force it off the sides with the wooden spoon. Don’t let it stick for long on the sides.
- Keep cooking the dough until it starts to pull away on its own and begins to steam.
- Finish mixing using a stand mixer. Take the dough while it is still hot and transfer it to a mixing bowl.
- Use the paddle attachment on a hand mixer and then add in the cheese and mustard.
- Beat the dough on low speed.
- Add in your eggs one at a time and let each egg mix fully into the dough before adding in another one.
- Once all the eggs have been mixed in, you can add in the parsley and chives and combine with the mixer.
- Take all of the mixture and move it to a resealable plastic bag. You could use a pastry bag as well that has a ½ inch tip.
- Allow your mixture to remain at room temperature for about 20 minutes.
- While it is resting, boil a large pot of water with salt and prepare a baking sheet with a rim.
- If you went with the resealable plastic bag rather than the pastry bag, cut a ½ inch hole in one of the corners.
- Then, squeeze the contents of the bag out onto the baking pan and cut the dough into one-inch sections.
- As you cut pieces of dough, put them into the boiling water over the course of a minute. After a minute, stop adding dough cuts to the pot.
- Keep cooking the dough until all of the pieces are floating, which should take about three minutes. This will mean that they are fully cooked inside.
- Take the cooked gnocchi out of the pot using a metal strainer or spider strainer. Transfer the dough to the rimmed baking sheet.
- Pour a little olive oil over each piece of dough and toss the dough pieces to coat them.
- You may have dough left that didn’t get cooked yet. Just go through the same process with that dough, cutting it into sections and putting it to cook in a boiling pot of salted water, then place it onto the baking sheet and drizzle with oil.
How Do You Make Gnocchi By Hand?
You can make up Parisian gnocchi without using a stand mixer if you like. If you don’t have a mixer available or you just want to burn some calories while you cook, then doing it by hand will absolutely work for his recipe.
To make it by hand, start from Step 2, and take the pot off the heat. Add in your cheese and mustard and use the wooden spoon to beat the dough until everything is mixed completely.
Add in the eggs next, remembering to add them in one at a time. Be sure to beat the eggs each time and beat them well so that the eggs do not curdle. You want the eggs fully incorporated into the dough before adding in the next one.
Once all the eggs have been added to your mixture, you can add in the herbs. Then, take the mixture and put it into a resealable plastic bag or a pastry piping bag. Finish the rest of the recipe according to the direction up above that begin at Step 6.
What Do You Do If You Have Soggy Gnocchi?
If the gnocchi you made is coming out soggy, then it needs to cook longer. It’s okay to boil it for longer than three minutes if necessary. The longer it cooks, the harder it gets, and it is definitely possible to undercook the food and have it turn out too limp and soggy.
You can always take out the gnocchi one at a time and test each one to see how cooked and how hard it is. If it is not cooked thoroughly, then let it cook further and let it harden up to the desired toughness.
Another reason that the dough might not be getting hard enough when cooked and when it becomes gnocchi pasta is because you might not be working the dough enough.
This can be a strenuous recipe to make, because it really requires some effort to work that dough and mix it while it is cooking. If you are not mixing it thoroughly, your dough can come out too light, even too light for gnocchi.
