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Repurposing leftovers to make a new meal is a genius way to save money while still eating well. Using leftovers as ingredients for a new meal is also a great way to cut down on your prep and cooking time instead of working entirely from scratch. One of my favorite up-cycled leftover meals is turning mashed potatoes into gnocchi.
Gnocchi is basically one part mashed potatoes, one part flour, and some egg as a binder. This makes a dough that you can mold into fluffy, exquisite gnocchis. And lookit how cute they are!
If you’re starting from scratch, one cup of potatoes is roughly half a pound. Peel and boil them to be soft enough to break easily with a fork and let them cool enough that you can handle the dough without regretting your life choices. Mash them up and use that as your potato portion of the recipe.
I generally use leftover mashed potatoes so my gnocchi are usually also seasoned with whatever I decided to dress my mashed potatoes with.
The gnocchi dough should be smooth, and not too sticky. You can use a bit more flour as needed to dust your hands and work area or to add to the mix but don’t overdo it.
Take a handful of dough at a time and roll it out into a snake (remember playdoh?) and cut that snake into bite sized pieces, as evenly sized as possible, using a butter knife or a fork. Think “bite-sized”, only a little smaller because they will expand a bit as they cook.
The next step is to roll each of these little knobs of dough over the back of a fork so that you get that classic ridged look on your cooked gnocchi. Set the gnocchi aside on a baking sheet until you’ve rolled them all out. This is a very delicate process that is totally going to be worth the effort.
Next, set a large pot of water to boil. Attempt to put your gnocchi into the pot. This absolutely will not happen, because you’re an idiot and now all of your beautiful ridged pastas are sticking to each other. Ragefully grab the pasta/amorphous blob of dough in your fist and start breaking off random uneven chunks of shapeless glop directly into the boiling water while swearing colorfully because rolling out all of those gnocchi took you like, what, an hour? A fucking HOUR???
Pro tip that I didn’t receive until later (thank youuuuu Emily!), but you can gently toss your gnocchi in flour before placing them on that baking sheet and they won’t stick together. What. A lifesaver. The shape held up well after I followed that simple tip.
When the gnocchi is fully cooked it will expand slightly in size and float. Use a slotted spoon to gently remove them to a bowl and set aside.
At this point you can probably dress your gnocchi with some pesto and call it a meal as is. Gnocchi takes well to many different sauces and pesto, but I like my gnocchi on the crispy side. I fry it up a bit in the skillet with butter and toss it in vegetables.
In a nonstick (non. Stick. Nonstick. NON. STICK.) skillet, melt some butter. Sautee some chopped onions to mostly translucent, and add your gnocchi to cook it to a light, crispy brown outside.
Drop in a brick of frozen spinach, some minced garlic, and a drained can of mushrooms, and heat through.
Top with crushed red pepper
If you didn’t heed my warning and use a nonstick pan, good luck cleaning up your skillet.
Originally published at https://filltheskillet.com on March 19, 2021.
