Have a fancy pasta night thanks to this Pesto Gnocchi! Even with homemade gnocchi, it’s easier than you think-and tastier than you can imagine! 

THE INGREDIENTS: 

Gnocchi Pasta: Homemade or store bought gnocchi works amazingly well in this recipe! This Pesto Gnocchi is an easy way to use up leftover potatoes, but buying store bought gnocchi makes this meal go so quickly that you could pull it off on a weeknight. We recommend using 4 servings of gnocchi in this recipe. One important note is that this is the fresh gnocchi recipe that we use. We have found that, although it says it makes 2 servings, it definitely serves 3-4.

We have only used russet potatoes to make our gnocchi for this recipe, so we cannot comment on how using another type of gnocchi would work. If we were to guess, though, it would work just fine. Recipes are meant to be adjusted for you and your family’s tastes! The chew and flavor of gnocchi is what really takes this dish to the next level, so we don’t recommend replacing the gnocchi with another pasta. If you must, however, we recommend pasta with a larger size. Good examples are pappardelle, tagliatelle, or ravioli (filled with what you like).  

Pasta Water: As much as you can just mix pesto in with gnocchi and call it day, that can get a little thick. To keep the pesto flavor prominent while also having a thinner consistency, we add pasta water. What makes pasta water different from regular water is that it includes the starch from the gnocchi. This starch acts like a natural thickening agent that helps the pesto cling to the pasta, as well. 

Goat Cheese: Even with parsley in our pesto so the pesto is not overwhelmingly strong, this meal can get heavy (thanks, olive oil) and monotonous quickly. Instead of making a pesto cream sauce, we wanted to have a sauce that’s entirely herby instead of creamy, like alfredo and many other pastas already are. Still, we knew we needed something to balance all of that pesto flavor! Goat cheese is a stronger, creamier cheese-perfect for meals with lots of flavor, like this one. If you’re not a fan of goat cheese, we still recommend having at least one topping on this gnocchi. It can be ricotta cheese, some parmesan, some toasted breadcrumbs, or even some toasted nuts. Having something with a creamier for nuttier flavor really helps balance a dish that has many herbs.

Basil: Pesto and basil go hand-in-hand. In fact, it is the predominant flavor of our-if not every-pesto recipe. Although we use a mixture of basil and parsley, feel free to use all basil in this pesto recipe. Just replace the parsley with basil 1:1. When we say 1 cup of fresh basil, it is also the same thing as one of those 0.8 ounce containers of basil you can buy at the grocery store. So, if you use those, use the whole thing! 

Parsley: Parsley may not be the most traditional ingredient, but it has found itself in many pesto recipes, including ours! It’s light and fresh. It helps to make a pesto that you can eat in large quantities, instead of just being able to have a little dab before it just feels way too strong. Again, if you’d rather not use parsley, just replace this 1:1 with more basil. This is a great recipe for using up leftover parsley, as those fresh bunches you can buy without any packing at many grocery stores often have more than 1 cup of parsley to them. 

Sunflower Kernels: Well, these aren’t pine nuts, that’s for sure. However, pine nuts are often quite expensive or even hard to find. When we made pesto with pine nuts, we found they didn’t leave any flavor that made them worthy of buying just for one recipe. However, pine nuts do thicken pesto quite well. So, we learned more about sauces, and found other nuts and seeds can thicken up other sauces, such as pesto, just as well. 

If you don’t have sunflower kernels or pine nuts on hand, feel free to reach for just about any nut or seed you have on hand. With that being said, make sure you are using nuts/seeds that are shelled (no shells). Sunflower kernels, for example, are just sunflower seeds with the shell taken off. In addition to that, think of the flavor of each nut. Peanuts will leave a bit of their flavor impact on the pesto, for example. Cashews or almonds, which have a bit lighter of a flavor, will replicate pine nuts a bit more closely. If you don’t mind buying sunflower kernels, just know they also make a wonderful addition to muffins and granolas! 

Salt: We don’t want our pesto to fall flat, do we? A little bit of salt livens everything up without making you desperate to reach for a glass of water. You know your tastes best, so increase or decrease the salt to your own tastes. 

Black Pepper: Black pepper adds a bit of sharpness to our pesto, but the amount is entirely customizable. We recommend not being too heavy handed, as this is not a flavor you want in the forefront-we want the herbs to be the stars! Increase or decrease this black pepper to your own desires, and feel free to use either ground or freshly cracked. We are partial to freshly cracked, but any black pepper works here. 

Garlic Cloves: Pesto was originally made in Italy. What does Italy make you think of? Can we guess you just thought of the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Sincerely, though, you probably also thought about garlic. You’d be spot on with that, as pesto also traditionally is made with garlic cloves crushed right in! We use 1-2 cloves for a slight, but not strong, garlic flavor in our pesto. Increase or decrease as desired. Keep in mind the size of your cloves when deciding! 

Olive Oil (+ Where Is The Parmesan?): We have two moods: minimize oil as much as possible or dump like a whole cup straight into the pot and get cooking! When we were making this recipe, we really wanted to find the minimum amount of oil for this recipe. We added 1-2 tablespoons at a time until we hit 8 tablespoons, aka a half cup. We really couldn’t get a successful pesto with less than that. Otherwise, it was more like an herb paste instead of a sauce. If you want to reduce the oil, you’ll have to reduce the sunflower kernels. Be aware, then, that you’ll have a smaller amount of pesto than we make here! 

Also, we use sunflower kernels to thicken our pesto and replace the pine nuts. That leaves the question: but why isn’t parmesan thickening this pesto recipe? Personally, we just like our pesto without. We like cheese, we really do, but we’re not of those who think cheese just makes everything better. In our fridge, we really stick to minimal cheeses and don’t frequently have parmesan on hand-and you all can guess how much we like cooking with what we have!

KEY INFORMATION:

What Should I Know When Making Homemade Gnocchi For the First Time? Here are a few tips for when we began our gnocchi journey. First, even if it is a little hot to handle, you don’t want your potatoes to cool down completely. They will be harder to incorporate in your gnocchi dough. No one wants gnocchi with a ton of potato chunks! That’s why it’s not worth the hassle to bake your potatoes ahead of time. 

A second thing we learned from experience is to not stress out about making those perfect ridges. You may not be consistent in shape or maybe you can’t figure out just how to get it to actually roll correctly on your fork. Even if you just cut them into pieces and throw them in water they will be delicious.

Can I Just Add All of the Pesto Ingredients at Once? Nope. If you add all of the liquid at once, the dry ingredients will be suspended in the liquid and not grind as well. Instead, some of the ingredients will just fly around in the liquid. It is better to add the oil slowly, about 2 tablespoons at a time, blending after each addition. This makes sure the other ingredients actually break down when they are processed or ground. 

Can I Use a Food Processor to Make Pesto? Yes, you can! In fact, a food processor is what we go for when making pesto. 

Can I Use a Blender to Make Pesto? Yes, you can! Although a step down from a food processor, a blender still works fine. 

Can I Use a Mortar and Pestle to Make Pesto? Yes, you can! A mortar and pestle does just as good of a job as a food processor, in our opinion. It just takes a touch more strength and a touch more time. 

What Goes with Pesto Gnocchi? Pesto Gnocchi pairs well with a side salad, especially if you add some delicious homemade croutons on top. You could even have some roasted broccoli or cauliflower for another simple veggie side. If you’re looking for something carby, feel free to make some garlic knots or garlic bread. In fact, you could even be fancy and try out some homemade breadsticks! It’s ok to want to add more protein to this dish, too. Have it as a side for almond-crusted salmon or another kind of fish dinner. It also would go very well with grilled chicken.