Homemade gnocchi is easier than you think. You just need a bag of instant potato flakes. Not only do you get consistent results, but there’s no need to peel, boil and rice potatoes, so you can get the dumplings kneaded, shaped and cooked in under an hour.

What are instant potato flakes?

Don’t let misguided snobbery prevent you from enjoying great gnocchi in short order. Instant potato flakes aren’t anything magical or mysterious, and they certainly aren’t something to fear. They’re just potatoes that have been cooked, mashed thin and dried.

If you’ve made gnocchi the “traditional” way, you know that cooking the (peeled, cubed, boiled and riced) potatoes to drive off excess water is a key step. Doing so ensures the dumplings are light and fluffy, not dense and gluey. Instant potato flakes simply reduce the amount of labor required on your part. All you have to do is add just enough moisture to form a cohesive, workable dough.

Some brands contain preservatives like citric acid or emulsifiers like monoglyceride, but our favorite brand — Bob’s Red Mill — is made only with russet potatoes, without any additives. (The type of potato used matters. Russets contain high starch content needed to make fluffy gnocchi.)

How to make gnocchi dough with instant potato flakes

Start by adding hot water to the flakes, stirring until no clumps or dry spots remain. Let the mixture cool. (Touch it to make sure.) Adding eggs directly to hot potatoes will give you scrambled eggs in potatoes, which is not what you want. Add a couple of eggs, flour and salt and stir to make a dough. Knead until smooth and get ready to roll and shape.

How to shape gnocchi

Dust a work surface with flour and divide the dough into four equal portions using a sharp knife or a bench scraper. Grab one piece of dough and set the other three to the side. Cover them with a kitchen towel to keep them from drying out and getting crusty on the edges. Roll the piece into a rope that’s 18 inches long and ¾ inch in diameter. Cut into ½-inch pieces and lightly dust with flour.

Why make indentations with a fork?

The little ridges you see on nearly all gnocchi aren’t there for aesthetic reasons; they increase the surface area of the pasta and create a rough, rustic texture that grabs onto sauce and holds it. To make them, just dip the back of a fork into flour and gently press into each piece to create a ridged surface. Transfer the gnocchi to the baking sheet, spacing them so they don’t touch.

Floating gnocchi doesn’t always equal done gnocchi

Most gnocchi recipes instruct one to remove the dumplings once they float to the top, but floating doesn’t always indicate they’re cooked through. “They may pop up to the surface really quickly, but it’s a good idea to leave them in the simmering water for another minute or two to make sure that they’re cooked all the way through,” explains our culinary director Wes Martin. “They may cook around the outside, which makes them buoyant, but if they’re not cooked through, you’re going to bite into them and they’re going to be kind of raw. We don’t want to bite into a pasty dough in the center.”

Spoon hot gnocchi directly into sauce

Rather than drain the gnocchi in a colander set in the sink, we fish the dumplings out of the simmering water with a slotted spoon and transfer them directly to a bowl of sauce —in this case a peppery pistachio-arugula pesto. The starchy water clinging to the dumplings will loosen and emulsify the mixture so it sticks. Be sure to reserve a little extra cooking water for thinning, though you probably won’t need it.

Garnish with pecorino and serve immediately.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.