Gluten Free Gnocchi; A Total Success! (Friday, December 23rd, 2016)

Our youngest daughter and her boyfriend love to experiment with recipes and try to re-create things they have had somewhere else. They recently came up with a recipe for pink sauce that they knew we would love, so they wanted to make us dinner.  The only problem was that we can't find a gluten free pasta that we really like, and we wanted her to be able to enjoy dinner as much as the rest of us.

So our daughter and I decided to try our hand at making gluten free gnocchi.  Since it is made mostly with potato, we thought that it might turn out better than regular pasta.  So this afternoon, we found a recipe (on the internet of course-glutenfreebaking.com), and got all of the ingredients.  Like with everything gluten free, the fear is that it will not hang together. 

We ended up making a few changes, which is common for us, and when we got to the section where it told us to roll the dough into logs and then cut the logs into bite sized pieces, we realized that was a pipe dream, and decided to roll the dough out about 1/3 of an inch think and then cut it into bite sized pieces.  This may not be conventional for gnocchi, bu neither is gluten free, so we're going with it.

Here is how our recipe ended up:

2 lbs Russet potatoes, washed (they are a high starch potato)
1 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sweet rice flour 
2 large eggs
at least 2 tsp salt
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Bake the potatoes until tender, then cool (overnight works well)
Grate the cooled potatoes using the small grater, into a large bowl.
Whisk together rice flour and sweet rice flour, set aside.
Whisk together eggs and 1 tsp salt, pour over the potatoes.
Work the egg mixture into the potatoes with forks until it begins to hold together.  Mixture will be sticky.
Begin working the flour mixture into the potatoes a little at a time.
Use some of the flour mixture to flour the counter.
Once the potatoes begin to form a dough, turn it out onto the counter and begin to knead by hand.  
Continue to add flour mixture until the mixture is firm and not sticky.
Divide the dough into eighths, and work with one piece at a time, covering the remaining dough with a wet cloth.
Roll the piece of dough out to about 1/3 inch thick, then cut into bite size pieces (about 1/2 in by 3/4 in), and roll each piece over a fork or gnocchi board.
Transfer the gnocchi onto a lightly floured (using gluten free flour) cookie sheet.
Formed gnocchi can be either frozen or cooked right away.
To cook, boil a large pot of salted water.  Divide the gnocchi in half, cooking each half until they float.  Transfer cooked gnocchi to a bowl for serving.

We then put the cut pieces on a cookie sheet dusted with rice flour. We were experimenting with the sizes of the pieces as well, and decided that the size didn't matter for cooking them, but the smaller pieces were nicer to eat.

We boiled them in small batches, fearing that a large batch of them would fall apart more easily, but I think we would have been OK in larger batches.

When we took them out, they were still intact!  Yay!  Another gluten free success story!

So we enjoyed a fabulous dinner of gluten free gnocchi with pink sauce!  

I think this should become a tradition before Christmas every year. It was a fabulous night spending time with these two great kids. Love them!  And the gnocchi turned out great.  It is so nice to have a pasta that tastes like the real thing!