Vegan Gnocchi From Scratch Recipe | Elephantastic Vegan (2024)

FAQs

What are vegan gnocchi made of? ›

This homemade vegan gnocchi recipe is eggless and so simple. Just potatoes, flour, and some oil come together to make these perfectly fluffy yet dense pillows of pasta that taste just like traditional gnocchi!

Egg yolk added to your gnocchi dough helps improve texture, and keep it together while cooking. Gnocchi is traditionally made with eggs in Veneto and no eggs in Piedmont, the two Northern Italian regions famous for gnocchi. We vote for egg yolks at the rate of 1 per (500g) 1 lb of uncooked potatoes used.

Gnocchi can disintegrate for a few reasons. You might not have added enough flour or egg, or you may have overboiled them.

Therefore, I would recommend using semolina flour, over 00 Italian pizza flour for gnocchi since it too, is a pasta. Semolina flour is easy to knead and usually only needs to dry, like for spaghetti noodles or ravioli pockets rather than rise which is a usual expectation of pizza flour or all-purpose flour.

At Faro, Adey says, “We run very few potato gnocchi.” Instead they stick to the less common side of the root vegetable family: “Parsnip, gilfeather turnip, and salsify work great.” Broccoli and cauliflower, which are sturdy and dry, also hold up well to the test.

Italian flour

Plus, it has too much protein: High-protein wheat results in chewy gnocchi. If you want to be true to Italian gnocchi, look for imported Italian flour marked "00 tenero," which is milled from soft wheat with a low protein content.

Traditional gnocchi is made with eggs making it not vegan. My vegan gnocchi recipe has two substitution options. Option 1 (my favorite): I've included a recipe to make a simple homemade egg yolk. This yolk recipe will provide all the flavor and color of eggs which really makes this gnocchi so tasty!

Try not to knead it as kneading will develop the gluten and make your gnocchi chewy. Keep some flour in a cup for dusting the board and your hands as you work to stop the dough sticking. Cut your dough into 6 pieces and roll them each into fat ropes about as thick as your thumb.

Chewy gnocchi are the result of too much flour and over kneading the dough. It's important to knead the dough just until it comes together into a smooth ball and no more. This is because you don't want to encourage too much gluten development which makes them tough, chewy and rubbery.

The gnocchi dough will still be a bit crumbly when you first mix the potatoes with the flour and eggs. You want the final dough to be soft, smooth, and a little sticky. For gnocchi with a fluffy texture, don't knead the dough past the point where the flour is fully incorporated into the potatoes.

Is it better to bake or boil gnocchi? ›

The secret to the lightest, most tender potato gnocchi is to bake the potatoes instead of boiling them. A baked potato is dryer than one that has been boiled, which means you avoid having to add more flour to the dough to account for excess moisture, a practice that leads to over-kneaded, tough gnocchi.

Double zero flour, especially the Italian flour Caputo Tipo 00 bread flour (also called chef's flour), is popular with pizzerias. It is a white flour consisting of Italian wheat—a soft wheat made from durum wheat.

For guaranteed lightness in potato gnocchi, try replacing 25g of the plain flour with self-raising. Flattening the gnocchi helps them cook evenly, while the grooves from the fork pick up sauce.

All this said, it's generally fine to substitute all-purpose flour for “00” flour. You'll notice a texture difference if you grew up in Europe or are very familiar with with products made from “00” flour, but all your recipes will still come out just fine.

What is gnocchi? Gnocchi, pronounced 'n(y)oh-kee' (singular 'gnocco'), are a type of pasta consisting of soft, fat and chewy dumplings, typically paired with ragú, tomato or butter sauce. Traditionally, gnocchi dough is made of semolina or plain wheat flour, egg, and mashed potato.

Nutritional Value

Believe it or not, regular pasta is actually more carb-heavy than gnocchi, coming in at around 2 times the amount of carbs per serving. Gnocchi is also notorious for having a lot more sodium, with over 200 grams of it per serving. Regular pasta doesn't have nearly as high of a sodium content.

In addition, most gnocchi is oil-free and vegan. Gnocchi is available in the pasta section on the shelf, vacuum-sealed, refrigerated, or frozen in most grocery stores. I love meals with gnocchi. I make vegan gnocchi soup and creamy tomato gnocchi soup in the winter.

Ingredients: Rehydrated Potatoes 70% (water, dehydrated potato flakes(potatoes, natural extract of rosemary), Corn Flour, Potato Starch, Corn Starch, Rice Flour, Salt, Acidity Regulator: Lactic Acid, Tumeric.