Wild garlic gnocchi

These vegan wild garlic gnocchi are unbelievably delicious and they’re so tender they melt in your mouth! Everyone loves potato gnocchi and these seasonal ones with wild garlic are extra special! They are so pretty and enticing with that lovely green colour and the little dark green flecks. Their delicate garlicky flavour means they need nothing more than a little melted vegan butter and a pretty garnish to create an extraordinary dish that will leave your guests in awe of your cooking skills!

About this wild garlic gnocchi recipe

Naturally vegan, these Italian wild garlic gnocchi are made with just 3 ingredients: potatoes, flour and wild garlic leaves, plus salt and water. Homemade gnocchi are a festive dish in Italy. Gnocchi hail from northern Italy, in particular from the regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. Today, every part of Italy has its own variation of gnocchi and its own specific serving style.

Traditionally, homemade gnocchi might be on the menu for Sunday lunch, as an alternative to lasagne or other festive first course. A special weekend dinner at home with family or friends might feature some kind of gnocchi. Admittedly, they take a while to make, about an hour of hands-on time for 4 people, but they’re absolutely worth the time and effort! Shop-bought gnocchi are for quick weekday dinners.

Wild garlic season is in full swing and it’s a great time of year to be outdoors walking in the woods and foraging for the tender green leaves of this wonderful little plant. Given its health benefits, it’s worth eating as much of it as you can while you can!

Not sure where to find wild garlic or how to recognise it? Check out my post on How to identify, forage and eat wild garlic. In the same post, you’ll also discover the surprising health benefits of wild garlic.

It took me a while to perfect this recipe – I think I made just about every mistake that it’s possible to make on the road to producing perfect potato gnocchi. Those experiences taught me the science behind the ingredients (see below) and when you’ve grasped that, it’s easy!

Once you’ve mastered the basic recipe, you can get adventurous and make different variations, like spinach, chestnut, sweet potato, carrot, courgette… Whatever the flavour, it all starts with a great basic recipe!

Important tips/notes – how to make perfect potato gnocchi

Everything you need to know in order to make perfect melt-in-the-mouth gnocchi that hold their shape before and after cooking and don’t stick to your palate! All the little (Italian) secrets to making perfect gnocchi!

Flour

One of the most important things to understand is that gnocchi should be held together by flour alone – using eggs as a binding agent isn’t necessary or desirable. The trick is to use as little flour as possible – around 200 – 250 g per kilo of potatoes. This is easy to achieve using the right ingredients and methods. The more water there is in the other ingredients, the more flour you’ll need. The more flour you use, the tougher your gnocchi will be. The less flour you incorporate, the better the consistency and taste. Get it? Aim for just enough to hold the gnocchi together – 20 to 25 % is ideal. Plain (all-purpose) white flour is perfect for making gnocchi.

Potatoes

By now, you’ll have figured out that the potatoes need to be as dry as possible. But how do you do that? First of all, chose potatoes with a high starch and low water content.

Forget about people telling you to bake them. Italians don’t do it that way. They simmer them in salted water with the skins on. Remember, simmer – not boil! Furious boiling will probably cause the skins to rupture, leading to soggy potatoes. After 20 minutes (30 mins for very large potatoes), put a knife through one of the potatoes to see whether it’s cooked. Don’t randomly stab all your potatoes – it lets water in! Choose similar-sized potatoes. When one is cooked, they all are. Drain them and leave them to steam dry in a colander.

As soon as they have dried off and are cool enough to handle, peel them. Put them through a ricer or vegetable mill (mouli) while they are still warm. Only add the flour once the potatoes have cooled down completely. Hot mashed potato activates the gluten in the flour and changes the consistency of the gnocchi dough, making it gooey. This translates to you needing to add more flour…

Never use a blender or food processor

Whatever you do, don’t use a blender or food processor for the potatoes! This makes them gooey and glutinous. Mashing them won’t give you the desired texture either. If you only have a masher, you might get half-decent gnocchi if you use 100 % starchy potatoes. You’ll probably end up with some lumps remaining, though. Either that, or you’ll risk over-mashing them to get rid of the lumps. Invest in a good ricer or vegetable mill (mouli) – you won’t regret it!

Salt

Salt causes vegetables to leak water due to the process of osmosis. For this reason, we won’t be adding salt to the gnocchi dough – only to the cooking water. Simmer the potatoes in abundantly salted water. This will give them some flavour – unsalted potatoes are tasteless. The finished gnocchi are also cooked in salted water.

Wild garlic leaves

The wild garlic leaves need to be as dry as possible. After washing them, dry them thoroughly. I use a salad spinner and then lay them out on a clean, dry kitchen cloth to allow them to dry off completely. The next bit is something I learnt from an older Italian lady who I observed while she was making spinach pasta. She ground the leaves down in the flour. Genius! Result? Dry spinach flour instead of wet cooked spinach which absorbs loads of flour and makes your gnocchi doughy and hard. Needless to say, I adopted the same method for this wild garlic gnocchi recipe.

How to mix the ingredients together

The ingredients just need amalgamating. You can mix the ingredients with a spatula or your hands. Don’t knead the gnocchi dough. Again, kneading activates the gluten in the flour.

How to make wild garlic gnocchi

Ingredients

For the exact quantities, see the recipe card below.

Potatoes – You can use all-purpose potatoes to make gnocchi. Alternatively, use a mix of 50 – 75 % starchy and 25 – 50 % waxy potatoes. Don’t use new potatoes.

Flour – Plain (all-purpose) flour is perfect for gnocchi. You will need approximately 2/3 of the flour for the gnocchi dough and the other 1/3 for rolling out etc.

Wild garlic leaves – You will need the young tender leaves without the stalks or bulbs. It’s really important that you thoroughly dry the leaves after washing them.

Salt – You will need salted water for boiling the potatoes and cooking the gnocchi.

Method

For step-by-step instructions with photos, see the recipe card below.

How to cook and rice the potatoes

Simmer the potatoes with their skins on in salted water for about 20 – 30 minutes, or until they are cooked through.

Drain the potatoes and leave them in a colander to steam dry and cool down.

When the potatoes have cooled down enough to handle, peel the skins off.

Put the potatoes through a food mill (mouli) or potato ricer. Whatever you do, don’t use a blender or food processor for this job! (See notes below and in the main blog post above for explanations.) Place the food mill / hold the ricer over a bowl to catch the mashed potato as it falls.

Wash the wild garlic and dry it thoroughly (see notes above and below).

Prepare the gnocchi dough

When the wild garlic leaves are dry, put one third of the flour in a food processor or blender and then add the leaves. Add another third of the flour, reserving the final third for rolling out etc. Blend the leaves and flour together to obtain a green powder with only small particles of wild garlic.

Add the green flour to the mashed potatoes and amalgamate with your hands or a wooden spoon without overworking the mixture. It should be a bit sticky but workable. If necessary, add some more flour (see notes below and in the main text above). Test the gnocchi dough by cutting a piece off, coating it in flour and rolling it out on the worktop into a sausage shape with your hands. If it really sticks to the worktop or your hands, put it back in the bowl and add more flour. I don’t recommend exceeding 250 g of flour in the dough.

When you’re happy with the consistency, sprinkle a generous amount of flour on the worktop and roll the gnocchi dough into long snakes the thickness of a standard sausage.

Cut the sausages crosswise into lengths of about 2 cm. Make sure they are well coated in flour. Shape the pieces in your hands.

How to cook wild garlic gnocchi

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil. Using a slotted spoon, lower the gnocchì gently into the boiling water until there is a single layer on the bottom of the pan. You will need to do them in batches. Adjust the heat under the pan so that the water is constantly simmering but not boiling furiously.

After a minute or so, the gnocchi will start to rise to the surface and float – that means they are cooked. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon as soon as they come to the surface and place them on a serving dish or individual plates.

Continue adding raw gnocchi to the pan of simmering water to replace the ones you have taken out. Don’t overcrowd the pan.

How to serve wild garlic gnocchi

While the last of the gnocchi are cooking, melt some vegan butter in a pan and cut a few wild garlic leaves into very thin strips for garnish.

When you have plated all the gnocchi, pour melted vegan butter over them. Alternatively, you can add the gnocchi to the pan of melted butter and toss them in it. Garnish with the thin strips of wild garlic you have prepared and serve immediately.

Sprinkle vegan parmesan cheese over the gnocchi for that extra special finishing touch!

It takes just 5 minutes to make this vegan parmesan cheese at home with 4 ingredients and it tastes very similar to the real thing!

If you fancy a sauce rather than melted butter, go for a simple tomato sauce (preferably homemade) which will enhance and not mask the flavour of the wild garlic gnocchi.

How to store wild garlic gnocchi

Store any leftover gnocchi cooked rather than raw. In their raw state, they don’t keep very well, unfortunately. Shop-bought gnocchi have additives to improve shelf life and the texture is always compromised.

Put any leftover cooked gnocchi in an airtight container in the fridge, where they will keep for 4 – 5 days.

To reheat, either plunge them into boiling water for a minute, or microwave them. Alternatively, heat up the sauce or butter first and then add the gnocchi and slowly heat through with a lid on.

Can you freeze potato gnocchi?

You can freeze gnocchi, although I don’t recommend doing it – the texture is not the same after freezing. If you do need to freeze them, lay them out in a single layer so that they aren’t touching each other and freeze them like that. Once frozen, you can tip them into a freezer bag to save on space.

If you froze them in their raw state, cook them by tipping them, still frozen, into boiling water and waiting for them to rise to the surface. It will just take them a minute longer to cook.

Frozen cooked gnocchi are also best plunged, still frozen, into boiling salted water and heated up quickly.

I hope you like this recipe for vegan wild garlic gnocchi! If you do, it would be great if you could give it a star rating and leave a comment below! It helps other readers to find my content and posts and ultimately makes my blog more successful! Thanks so much for your support! Deborah xx

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