Potato Dishes
Potato Gnocchi
Light homemade potato gnocchi with sage butter: floury potatoes baked, not boiled, riced while hot and mixed with just enough flour and a little egg. Below: why baking beats boiling, egg or no egg, and other sauces.
- Serves 4
- Prep 40 min
- Cook about 1 hr 15 min, with baking the potatoes
- Vegetarian with a vegetarian hard cheese
- Italian
Baked or boiled potatoes? Egg or no egg? Our verdict ↓
Variations: With tomato sauce, With pesto, Pan-fried gnocchi ↓
Method
Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan, gas 6, 400°F). Prick the potatoes and bake them directly on the oven shelf for about 1 hour, until completely soft.
While they are still hot, cut the potatoes in half and scoop the flesh out of the skins (hold them in a tea towel). Press the flesh through a potato ricer onto a clean, lightly floured work surface, or mash very thoroughly so there are no lumps. Spread it out and leave to steam off and cool for 5–10 minutes, until warm rather than hot.
Sprinkle over the salt, nutmeg and three-quarters of the flour, then pour the egg into a well in the middle. Using a dough scraper or your fingertips, bring it together gently into a soft, slightly sticky dough, adding more flour only if it is too sticky to roll. Knead for no more than 30 seconds: overworking makes heavy, rubbery gnocchi.
Bring a large pan of well-salted water to the boil and cook one test gnocchi (see step 7). If it falls apart, work a little more flour into the dough.
Divide the dough into 6 pieces. On a floured surface, roll each into a rope about 2 cm (¾ in) thick and cut into 2 cm (¾ in) pieces. Leave them as pillows, or roll each one down the back of a fork or a gnocchi board for ridges that hold the sauce. Lay them on a floured tray, not touching.
Melt the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the sage leaves and cook until the butter turns light nut-brown and the sage is crisp, about 3 minutes. Take off the heat.
Cook the gnocchi in batches in the boiling water: they are done 30 seconds after they float to the surface, about 2 minutes in all. Lift them out with a slotted spoon straight into the sage butter.
Toss the gnocchi in the butter over a medium heat for a minute (they may turn lightly golden), then serve with the Parmesan and black pepper.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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Baked or boiled potatoes? Egg or no egg?
Small choices that decide whether gnocchi are light or leaden.
| Choice | Effect | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Baked potatoes (this recipe) | Drier flesh needs less flour | Lightest gnocchi. Felicity Cloake bakes hers, about 1 hour at 200°C. |
| Boiled in their skins | Wetter; needs more flour | Fine if you let the riced potato steam dry well on the board. |
| With egg | Binds the dough; more forgiving for beginners | We use one egg for 1 kg potatoes (Cloake uses 2 small). |
| No egg | Softer and more delicate, but can fall apart | For experienced gnocchi makers. |
Our verdict: bake floury potatoes, rice them hot, add as little flour as you can and one egg, and do not knead. Test one before shaping the batch.
Read on 1 November 2026: The Guardian: Felicity Cloake, “How to make gnocchi” (2022).
Variations
Ways to change the main recipe. Each uses the same method unless it says otherwise.
With tomato sauce
Toss the cooked gnocchi in a simple tomato sauce with torn basil and finish with grated Parmesan, or with a little mozzarella grilled until bubbling.
With pesto
Toss with 4 tablespoons of basil pesto loosened with a spoonful of the cooking water.
Pan-fried gnocchi
Skip the boiling: fry the shaped gnocchi in butter and a little oil over a medium heat for 6–8 minutes, turning, until golden and cooked through.
Useful kit
- Potato ricer: for the smoothest, fluffiest mash and gnocchi without overworking the potato. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Gnocchi board: rolls the ridges that hold the sauce. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Spider strainer: lifts chips, gnocchi and parboiled potatoes out without breaking them. Amazon UK · Amazon US
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See also
Chef’s notes
- Uncooked gnocchi can be open-frozen on a floured tray, then bagged; cook from frozen, allowing an extra minute.
- The drier the potato, the less flour you need and the lighter the gnocchi. That is why we bake rather than boil, and use a floury variety.
- Boiled gnocchi are also very good fried in a little butter afterwards until golden.
A little history
Gnocchi are much older than potato gnocchi: early versions were made from a dough of flour or semolina. After the potato reached Europe, it was added to gnocchi in the late 19th century, when the cost of milling wheat became too high for small landowners in central and northern Italy. Potato gnocchi are particularly popular in Lombardy, Abruzzo, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Lazio.
Sources for these notes
For the history and the food-safety advice in the notes.
How this recipe was developed
A new recipe, because gnocchi is the 3rd most searched potato recipe in the UK and 4th in the US (Google Trends, last 12 months). We followed Felicity Cloake’s tested method: baked floury potatoes, riced hot, a modest amount of flour and egg.
- Potatoes. Cloake: 1 kg Desirée or Maris Piper, baked about 1 hour at 200°C. We use Maris Piper or King Edward.
- Flour and egg. Cloake uses 250–350 g flour and 2 small eggs; we start at 200 g with 1 egg and add flour only as needed.
- Cooking. Until they float, plus a few seconds (Cloake); we say 30 seconds.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.