Tuesday 13 August 2019

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I have made a lot of Gnocchi, but I had never made a sweet potato Gnocchi. I wasn't certain it would even work, the first thing you learn about making Gnocchi, the drier your mash the better! And if there is one thing that I know about a sweet potato and that is it makes a wet mash - surely it can't work?!


It did...sort of!

First things first - I need a recipe, as everything I have isn't going to work - wrong potatoes! I had a look at a few different recipes online, and quickly realised that they followed the same rules as normal Gnocchi...just more flour.

So I decided against using a recipe - and decided to add flour in small quantities until I got what I thought was a good Gnocchi dough consistency.

That is where I came a little unstuck - I knew sweet potato mash was going to be wet (I had even strained my mash through a muslin, removing 100ml of excess fluid) - what I hadn't realised is that the dough would have to be worked with wet - otherwise you end with too much flour in your mix, which leads to a (heavens forbid) tough Gnocchi!

As the mix is wet I avoided the use of eggs (which are contentious enough in Gnocchi), and stuck to a mix of sweet potato, flour, salt, and a little parmesan.



As mentioned earlier I was adding flour little by little, and with the dough being so wet I had put in 400g of flour before I made a sample Gnocchi to see how the mix held up, the good new was, despite the wetness of the dough, the Gnocchi firmed up and floated to the surface. The bad news? To my fussy palate I had overstepped the flour mark, it was bordering on the brink of having to chew!

If I was to do this recipe again - I would test at 200g and see where the mix was at - as the extra 200 I had added - really did very little to dry the dough. And less flour in Gnocchi is what we should all be aiming to achieve!



When it comes to serving Gnocchi it's really versatile and can be partnered with so many things. However, as this was my first time making sweet potato Gnocchi I wanted the dumplings to be the main flavour of this dish and kept it simple; butter, sage, sunflower seeds, rocket, and a little Parmesan to finish!

Overall I am pretty happy with the results - I need to try again with lower flower quantity and see how that works for me - if you give it a try i'd love to here how you did!

Anyway please watch the video below (like, subscribe - we all know the youtube drill!)

Thanks/bye
Rob x