Vegan 3-Ingredient Sweet Potato Gnocchi
With a Tomato and Sage Butter Sauce!
I first made gnocchi by hand in a cabin in upstate New York with contributing writer Tara Hammonds. She had recently returned from working in Madagascar for a few months, where she said she made gnocchi all the time with her limited access to ingredients. I was shocked when she suggested that making gnocchi would be an “easy” thing for us to make for dinner. Only a few hours later I was completely entranced by the magic of handmade gnocchi.
Gnocchi is surprisingly easy (and fun!) to make. It uses a small handful of ingredients that you likely already have, making the little pieces is so much fun, and kneading the dough is a great forearm workout. You can buy gnocchi from the store, but it often comes in plastic packaging that is impossible to recycle. While I’ve made this same recipe many times using regular potatoes, making it with sweet potato is a wonderful way to add a bit of extra flavor. I like to saute the gnocchi in a bath of buttery, sage and tomatoes to finish them off, and I really think it is one of the best recipes for the beginning of fall when tomatoes are finishing their season and sweet potatoes are just getting their start (in many places).
Many gnocchi recipes also call for the addition of an egg or cheese mixed into the dough itself. These are more traditional and are certainly delicious variations of gnocchi, but we opted for this 3-ingredient recipe for its simplicity, and the fact that it is vegan. We hope you enjoy it!
Ingredients
Makes: 2 servings
Gnocchi:
1 large sweet potato
1 ¾ cups flour (all purpose, can use gf)
1 teaspoon salt
Butter Sage Sauce:
½ cup butter (can sub vegan butter or olive oil)
2 tablespoon dried sage
2 large tomatoes (use 1 can of diced tomatoes in the winter if fresh are not available)
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese (optional, can use a vegan alternative)
Preparation:
Making the Gnocchi:
Pierce sweet potato with a fork a few times before baking unwrapped on a pan in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes. You can also microwave for 8 minutes if trying to save time. The potato can be easily pierced with a fork, return to the oven or microwave if undercooked.
Wait for the potato to cool (this can take some time) before peeling off the skin. The skin should come off easily with your fingers.
Cut the sweet potato into 4 large chunks before mashing with a food processor, potato masher, fork, your fingers—whatever works best for you. Mash until there are virtually no lumps.
Transfer to a bowl, add salt, and slowly add flour into the mashed potato, about a quarter cup at a time. As you knead the flour into the dough it will begin to get less sticky. Once it begins to form a ball, lightly flour a countertop or large cutting board and transfer the dough to continue kneading. This is often when my arms get tired and I start recruiting friends or family to help!
Once you have added all of the flour you should have a dough that can easily be formed into a ball. Cut the dough into fourths, and roll the fourth of dough into a long “snake” about 1 inch in diameter.
Cut the long dough “snakes” with a sharp knife (I use a small paring knife) every ½ inch. You can stop at this step, or if you are feeling fancy, you can run these pieces of dough down the backside of a fork to add a ribbed texture. This is not only beautiful, but helps your little gnocchis catch more sauce!
Place these formed gnocchi in a bowl to the side and continue forming pieces with the rest of the dough.
Boil a pot of water and add half the gnocchi once the water is at a rolling boil. Once added, stir to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom or cling to each other. The gnocchi will be done cooking when they float to the top—this should take approximately five minutes. Remove floating gnocchi and boil the second half. You can boil all at once but they are more likely to stick to each other.
Sauce:
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Dice the tomatoes and add to the pan once the butter is completely melted.
After adding the tomatoes, add the sage, and salt and pepper to taste.
After lightly sauteing the tomatoes for approximately 3 minutes, add the cooked gnocchi to the pan and turn the heat up to high for 5 minutes, stirring continuously.
Remove from heat, top with your favorite cheese (parmesan, vegan parmesan, nutritional yeast—whatever you’re feeling), and enjoy!
Best Practices:
As always:
Avoid packaged produce. This is not to say that you’ll always have the option, but when you do, go for it! For example, you may sometimes tomatoes in plastic clamshells. Due to new recycling laws and international trade, these often have a recycling number on them but cannot actually be recycled. Additionally, things like spices can often be found in bulk (rather than in small containers). If you find a market that offers this option, give it a try!
Try to bring your own bags when you go shopping for these ingredients, and try to find them locally when you can!
Make sure you’re not buying more than you think you’ll reasonably use! That said, essentially all of these ingredients (other than those precious tomatoes!) can last a long time in your pantry, so if you buy more than you need, you’ll likely have plenty of other opportunities to use them.
These ingredients have been chosen with several things in mind:
This recipe is inherently seasonal. It brings out the fresh flavors of the end of summer with the tomatoes, but we already feeling the fall vibes (how did we get to October already?!) so the sweet potato is a great way to feel like fall.
This recipe is made so that it is very easy to make completely plant-based. We recommend checking out our Dealing with Dairy series to learn about some good dairy-free cheese options if you decide that you’d like to use a dairy-free option. We think that eating primarily plant-based is one of the best things that you can do for the environment, and that it can be delicious!
Did you enjoy this recipe? Let us know! If you really loved it, share it on social media and tag us (@groundedgrub), or, better yet, share it with your friends and family!
