Gnocchi with Mushroom Sauce

How fun is gnocchi?! Just the word itself can make anyone smile, now imagine what a delicious bowl of fluffy, soft, delicate Italian dumplings can do. This gnocchi recipe includes a creamy mushroom sauce that will have you mouth-watering through the whole cooking process. 

Potato gnocchi is lifesaver when you feel like having pasta but you don’t want to dip in the refined carb section. A bowl of gnocchi paired with a delicious creamy sauce will give you the precise comforting feeling we all look for in pasta dishes. 

There are many different types of gnocchi and some are made of wheat flour, so make sure you always double-check which kind are you buying. Also, not all gnocchi brands are made without egg, so this is important to note when you go shopping.

You can always make your own gnocchi as well, there are tons of recipes on the internet to choose from. They are a lot easier to make than what people think and it’s a super fun activity to get the kids involved in the kitchen.

Sometimes I make my own but a lot of times I just grab a premade bag from the shop. This cuts my cooking time in half. Also, it’s very practical to stock up when I buy groceries and just throw them in the stove when I need to whip together a quick meal. 

It’s easy to cook gnocchi but I’ll let you in with a little a trick I learned from an Italian friend. When I first started experimenting with this Italian dish, I would fry some of the veggies first and then I would throw the gnocchi in with the rest of the sauce ingredients. My gnocchi would turn out all soggy and mushy, not plump and fluffy.

My friend advised me to switch up the steps and start by slightly frying the potato dumplings on every side until golden brown. This will seal the outer layer of the gnocchi and they will hold perfectly while simmering in the sauce. Let me tell you, this small change it’s an absolute game changer!

Like most pasta dishes, what makes or breaks a gnocchi recipe is the sauce you pair it with. And in my opinion, when it comes to pasta, the creamier the better. So, for this recipe, I made a very simple and incredibly flavourful mushroom sauce. 

Since I really wanted to make a sauce with a lot of body but without making it too heavy, I used one of my favourite ingredients of all times: cauliflower. This vegetable, aside from adding a ton of nutrients it also adds a nice consistency to the dish. Its flavour is so mild that it easily goes unnoticed which allows us to mix it with all kinds of ingredients.

The last step is to season your sauce, mix it with the gnocchi and let it simmer for at least 5 minutes. We want to give enough time for the dumplings to really get infused with all the beautiful flavours we just mixed in together!