Shelf-stable gnocchi is a hero—as long as you don’t boil it.
version you might make in your own kitchen or order at a decent Italian restaurant like Barbuto or Don Angie in NYC. And there’s the shelf-stable version you buy at the grocery store: dehydrated oval orbs of potato puree—in reality, potato flakes mixed with water—that are designed to be ready in minutes via a quick boil. You know the brands (De Cecco, DeLallo, Giovanni Rana, Trader Joe’s…). Both exist for good reason; the former for a special occasion or night off the home-cooking clock, the other for a very fast weeknight dinner.
But here’s the thing about that quick weeknight dinner: Follow the directions on the package and boil the gnocchi for just a couple of minutes, and your likely result is gummy, gluey, dense, or generally…meh.
Do not despair, weeknight dinner seekers! There’s a better way. You simply need to ignore those boil-the-gnocchi instructions entirely. Instead, pan-fry the gnocchi in a bit of olive oil or butter for about five minutes. Or roast them in your oven for 20 minutes. Or air-fry them! All these methods result in a crispy outside–creamy inside texture paradise somewhat akin to mochi.
What? Don’t follow the supposedly well-tested and foolproof package instructions the company provides for you? Precisely. This simple crispy gnocchi preparation has gained traction among recipe developers, bloggers, and content creators in the past several years. And it’s vastly superior to any method involving water.
Crispy Gnocchi Patient Zero
How do recipe trends happen? Sure, there are the overnight-viral ones (we’ll never forget you, baked feta pasta) when a concept latches on so quickly that, in a period of days, seemingly everyone is talking about it, from young trendsetters on TikTok to grandmothers reading articles about young trendsetters on TikTok.
But then there are the slow-boil (pun intended) ones, when a recipe begets another recipe, which begets another recipe, until the internet is overrun with crispy gnocchi recipes (more! more!). There’s one commonality among these endless Google search results: Every author denounces the boiling method.
“The crispy gnocchi thing has definitely taken off because it’s so easy. It’s economical. You can get [packaged gnocchi] everywhere, and you can use it in so many ways. You could almost just replace roasted potatoes because it kind of has that similar vibe,” says Hetty Lui McKinnon, a cookbook author and recipe developer who started crisping shelf-stable gnocchi in 2017 after getting inspired by the memory of a pan-fried version from a long-closed Sydney restaurant. She’s created crispy gnocchi recipes for multiple cookbooks (for example, with chili crisp and bok choy) and online sources (with tomato and red onion).
The approach can be traced back even further than 2017 though. Ali Slagle, a fellow cookbook author and recipe developer, attributes her first crispy gnocchi encounter to a Nigella Lawson recipe that was created way back in the stone age of 2010.
While both McKinnon and Slagle have published scores of popular weeknight dinner–friendly recipes, their gnocchi recipes in particular have hit a pleasure center among readers. In fact, out of the 457 recipes Slagle has developed for the New York Times as of this writing, two of her top five most popular recipes of all time are crispy gnocchi recipes.
“Once it’s published in a big publication like the Times, or if a big creator uses it, that goes a huge way with popularity. It will go from zero to everything,” says McKinnon.
What Makes Crispy Gnocchi So Good, Anyway?
In a world saturated with weeknight cooking advice, from cookbooks to social media to websites to newspapers to newsletters to texts from your friends, people are still constantly craving new and easy-to-execute recipe ideas—it’s a hole that can never be filled. A lot of the advice out there is truly garbage, from bizarre TikTok hacks that don’t actually make food taste better (see: healthy Coke, pasta chips) to recipes that are way too complicated to make in 30 minutes. Crispy gnocchi is the inverse: It’s a hack that actually improves the product, and it can be ready in less time than the length of a Bluey episode.
“It’s kind of a rare texture in terms of things that you can get on the shelf. I think maybe only rice cakes and mochi have a similar ‘gummy bear’ quality. It’s a really fun texture. It’s pasta-like, but even more chewy,” says Slagle. But, she explains, “it’s also their speed and their ease. You don’t have to worry about cooking it through or what al dente means. They’re already done.”
McKinnon agrees. “Once you add that crisp element to it, that smoky element to it, it completely transforms the product.”
The Packaged Gnocchi Gods Are Watching You
While it’s easy to convert diners to crispy gnocchi, it takes longer for companies to change their ways. It’s still a packaging instruction free-for-all out there, with some brands now mentioning pan-fry methods and other brands ignoring this zeitgeist-preferred approach and only offering instructions for boiling on their package.
But there’s a product that’s recently appeared on supermarket shelves, including major chains like Walmart, Target, and Giant: Giovanni Rana’s Skillet Gnocchi. The package states: “Cooking our potato Gnocchi in the skillet creates a wonderfully crispy texture on the outside, with a soft, tender center.…Skillet Gnocchi can also be prepared with the boiling method for a traditional, softer bite.”
That’s right, it’s gnocchi specifically branded for the skillet, with a caveat that you don’t have to crisp it. So, has crispy gnocchi won out? Repeated attempts to reach Giovanni Rana, as well as several other gnocchi companies, were met with silence. (What does Big Gnocchi not want us to know??!!)
Trader Joe’s, however, was notably more candid. It currently offers seven different gnocchi products (cauliflower! outside-in stuffed gnocchi!), but only one is sold in the grocery (aka non-freezer) aisle. “While we include pan-fry and air-fry instructions on our frozen cauliflower gnocchi, we do not currently have plans to change our shelf-stable gnocchi packaging,” says Nakia Rohde, public relations manager.” The packaging currently instructs you only to boil or simmer it—though, Rohde acknowledges, “our customers frequently use Trader Joe’s products in ways not described on the label.”
We’ll take that as a win for Team Crispy.
Photos by Deli Studios