An Italian classic, with a fresh spring twist - our wild garlic gnocchi. If you love to make things from scratch and avoid plastic packaging, you will enjoy this recipe!
When springtime comes we get very excited about the arrival of wild garlic season. Also known as ramsons or Allium ursinum, this green leaf is pungent and full of garlicky flavour, and can often be found growing in huge patches in the woods.
You can find all our tips on how to find and use wild garlic in our Wild Garlic Guide.
We’ve come up with lots of other recipes to use wild garlic after a successful foraging trip. As well as these bright green gnocchi, we made creamy wild garlic soup and wild garlic hummus. We turned what was left into wild garlic pesto and froze it so we can enjoy it the whole year.
Ingredient tips
Simple gnocchi are made from potatoes and flour. Adding wild garlic gives a delicious subtle and fresh garlic flavour, as well as a vibrant green colour.
If wild garlic isn’t in season, or native to your area you can make these gnocchi using spinach and a few cloves of garlic instead.
Starchy potatoes work best, such as Desiree or Russet potatoes. Keeping everything as dry as possible helps to reduce the amount of flour you need to bring your gnocchi together into a workable dough.
Making the dough
To make our wild garlic gnocchi, we simply peel the potatoes (saving the peels to make some zero waste potato peel crisps) and then boil or steam them until tender.
Let the potatoes steam off their moisture, and then blend them up with washed and chopped wild garlic in a food processor, and then add enough flour to form a dough which holds together in a ball and is light but not super sticky.
Shaping gnocchi
Now this is my favourite bit - I always love making things into fun little shapes!
To make the gnocchi, divide the dough into four balls, then roll each ball into a strip about 2 cm thick.
Traditionally gnocchi are shaped using a ridged gnocchi board, but we have a low tech cheats way of making the classic ridges. Simply run a floured fork along the top of each strip of dough before you cut them. You can also roll individual pieces over the back of a fork, like we do with our Pumpkin Gnocchi. Quick, simple and no special equipment needed!
Slice the strips into 1.5cm pieces to form your gnocchi.
Cooking gnocchi
The hard part is over! Cooking your homemade gnocchi is the simplest and quickest step.
Just bring a pan of salted water to boil, then add your gnocchi and simmer until they start to float on the surface of the water. Scoop up the cooked gnocchi with a slotted spoon or fork, and get ready to serve your tasty gnocchi!
Serve them with
These wild garlic gnocchi go really well with a tomato sauce or a cheesy vegan sauce.
A sprinkle of nutritional yeast and olive oil is a simple but delicious way to enjoy your homemade gnocchi.
They are absolutely amazing covered in wild garlic pesto too!
Gnocchi are also great fried after they are cooked, which gives them a nice crispy crust. If you haven't yet tried fried gnocchi then you totally should!
We hope you enjoy this wild garlic gnocchi recipe! If you fancy some more seasonal recipes to make this Spring, try our:
And be sure to try our other wild garlic recipes too!
Wild Garlic Gnocchi
Ingredients
- 4 medium (400 g) potatoes (1 ½ cups mash or 400g)
- 1 small handful (50 g) wild garlic
- 1 cup (125 g) plain flour plus extra for dusting
- ½ tsp (½ tsp ) salt
Instructions
- Wash and peel the potatoes (you can save the peels for our potato peels crisps).
- Dice the potatoes and boil until tender when pricked with a fork, approximately 10-15mins.
- Drain the potatoes and let them steam off for 5 minutes.
- In the meantime, wash the wild garlic leaves very thoroughly and dry well in a salad spinner or on a tea towel.
- Finely chop the wild garlic.
- In a food processor, mix the chopped wild garlic and potatoes together until smooth.
- Then add the flour until it comes together as a dough. If it's still very sticky then add more flour. The amount of flour needed can vary so much depending on the variety of potatoes, and the amount of moisture that they retain.
- To form the gnocchi, with your hands roll the dough into long strips on a floured board. (Tip: flour your hands too!)
- Then run a floured fork along the dough to make the classic gnocchi indentations (this is our quick cheats way, you can also cut them and roll on a gnocchi board)
- Then slice the strips into small pieces (approximately 1.5cm wide) to form your gnocchi.
- Bring a pan of salted water to boil, then carefully put the gnocchi in the water and continue to simmer until the cooked gnocchi float to the surface. Scoop them up with a slotted spoon.
- Enjoy your wild garlic gnocchi simply with good olive oil, pesto, tomato or vegan cheese sauce. You can even fry them afterward for extra crispy flavour.
Hilary says
Enjoyed the wild garlic gnocchi tonight. Thank you for the recipe! Also made the wild garlic pesto and hummus another day. So yummy! Tried the dandelion honey last year for the first time and all four grandchildren loved it so they're picking dandelions for me this year!
Sophie and Paul says
You are so welcome Hilary, glad you have enjoyed so many of our recipes. Have fun making the dandelion honey with the grandkids!