gluten free gnocchi tasting too much like potato
I made my first batch of gnocchi this weekend and after quite a bit of work, I got gnocchi that didn't taste great. The consistency was ok; they did not disintegrate when I boiled them for a couple of minutes. BUT it felt like I was eating potatoes, nothing less, nothing more...
So I know... gnocchi are essentially potatoes. But still all the gnocchi I have tasted over the years, "regular" and gluten-free, all had a taste quite distinct from potatoes. I am wondering what I am missing.
I used red potatoes, which I had steamed in a pressure cooker, and mixed them with potato starch and rice flour. (Some of our family members are gluten free.) I let them dry for 30 mn to an hour before throwing them in boiling water in small batches and taking them out as soon as they floated, which was quick (1-2 minutes).
Any thoughts on improving on the taste of the gnocchi itself (as opposed to "cheating" by overloading them with butter, cheese and tomato sauce)?
Best Answer
Is it cheating to put the cheese inside the gnocchi?
I've used grated hard cheeses to help take up some of the moisture from gnocchi before. If you use cheese, plus some herbs or spices (nutmeg is pretty classic, a bit of rosemary might be nice as an alternative, or even lemon zest), it shouldn't taste like a baked potato.
I'd also be concerned with your choice of potatoes -- red potatoes around here tend to be a waxy potato. I typically use a mealy (aka floury aka starchy) potato such as a russet for gnocchi, or an in-between potato, such as a yukon gold.
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Does gluten free gnocchi taste different?
We think that a combination of rice flour and potato starch gives us the best results in terms of taste and texture and I personally find that you really can\xb4t taste the difference between traditional gnocchi and the gluten free version once they have been cooked and fried.Does gnocchi taste like potato?
Gnocchi primarily tastes almost bland. The flavor is comparable to the flavor of plain pasta when cooked. Potatoes are by nature pretty bland so the taste between gnocchi and pasta is very comparable. The differences come in when you add seasonings and sauces to create different types of dishes.Why did my gnocchi turn out so dense?
You might have incorporated too much flour in the mix. The dough in rope format is smooth-looking and homogenous. The dough is overworked, which results in tougher, denser gnocchi.How do you make gnocchi not chewy?
Add just enough flour to hold the dough together, and don't overmix. The culprit in tough gnocchi is usually one of two things (or both): too much flour in the dough or too much kneading.Gnocchi (gluten free)
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Answer 2
There seem to be a ton of gnocchi -recipees floating around... so I can really only guess which ones you ususally had. But for future batches try the following:
If there are gluten-free semolina you can get, use those instead of only flour. One recipe I have calls for an egg-yolk, perhaps that is what your previous gnocchi had. How did you season? Nutmeg (See Joes's answer) tends to add a quiet unique flavour.
Also, Joe's note about the potatoes is perfectly right: try to figure out the right potato for you. I have used waxy ones previously because they where simply what I had around, but starchy ones yield MUCH better results.
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