Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My favorite gnocchi recipe is by Todd Engish. Here it is with some type of lobster preparation - just use the gnocchi recipe with your own sauce.

You need a gentle hand with gnocchi and don't add too much flour or they will be tough. Required equipment = a potato ricer. This little apparatus will yield the smoothest potato mash which is really necessary in making gnocchi. It's a bit of a one trick pony except someone here recommended using it to squeeze water out of spinach. Even if it was for the sole use of ricing potatoes, I'd have one - it makes that much difference.

Another word of advice, when you're mixing the dough on the board, use a metal bench scraper to help fold the dough over. It will catch all the little straggler pieces that might get away or wind up wrapped around your hands. It will also stop you from adding excess flour.

When you cook the gnocchi, poach them in salted water. If you cook them at a full boil, you'll blow them apart. Alternatively, you can saute them in some melted butter, depending on what type of prep you're doing. (Butter & sage is a classic combination - add some grated parm to serve.) If you saute them, don't crowd the pan.

Good luck! They're so delicious and nothing beats homemade.

I only tried making potato gnocchi once and don't remember the recipe I used. I can only say that I think you should cook them before refrigerating/freezing them. I mixed a whole batch of gnocchi dough once and tested one. It tasted great so I decided to refrigerate the dough to use for a dinner party the next day. I took the dough out the next day and a lot of water had leeched out of the potatoes and my dough was now way too mushy.

My go-to gnocchi recipe now is the ricotta gnocchi from Jaden's website http://www.steamykitchen.com. It is successful, easy, and yummy every time.

Gnocchi turn into a blog of glue in the fridge but they freeze beautifully. Lay them out on a jellyroll pan so they're not touching and freeze. Then transfer to a ziplock bag.

I have cooked them directly after preparing them and I think a little bit of drying time is beneficial when you have to make them right away.

@Hunny - try them again! Try the recipe I posted above. I love that Todd English recipe. All the better if you incorporate some roasted garlic into them in the potato ricing stage!

Leftover gnocchi are great sautéed in butter till crispy & brown ... I think they it must be the origins of Tater Tots. Makes a great accompaniment to braised lamb.

Gnocchi are a great food for making and enjoying with friends, one of my favorite ways to entertain. With lots of hands, you can roll out lots of dough quickly, so make extra and freeze them for another day. You should cook them straight from the freezer -- they tend to gum up if you thaw them first.

And once you have mastered the basics, there are so many ways to vary the recipe -- use sweet potato, squash, ricotta cheese, add some spinach. You can even make a dessert gnocchi by filling them with a bit of jam and serving with a sweet topping (I've seen Lydia Bastianich make a variation of these on her show.)

@Jacquie--I know what you mean. After visiting her site, I am inspired, too. Nowhere near as talented or artistic, but definitely inspired.

Once you get the hang of it, they're not too difficult, and they freeze beautifully. I just lay them out of a cookie sheet so they aren't touching, and wait until they're frozen, then pop them into a ziploc bag, and they stay nicely separated.

As far as the admonition to be gentle with them, it might help to think of them as dumplings, rather than noodles.

There are plenty of recipes, but it seems that its less about ingredients than it is getting a feel for the dough and getting the technique right.

I particularly like squash gnocchi, and I generally serve them with a simple brown-butter sage sauce.