One-Pot Gnocchi with Vodka Sauce

Rich, velvety smooth vodka sauce enrobes tender mini gnocchi like a warm woolen blanket. And it’ll warm your insides too, especially when you find out it’s all made in a single saucepan!

You know those recipes that require a separate bowl for mixing this and another pot for boiling that? This isn’t one of those recipes. The mini gnocchi is cooked right in the saucepan with the sauce, which makes for an ultra fast and easy weeknight dinner, and cleanup is even easier.

This recipe was created in partnership with Delallo®, our go-to brand for authentic Italian flavor, including pastas, sauces, and specialty imports.

We’ve all heard of vodka sauce, but do you know know why it’s really called that? I mean, we can assume there is vodka in it, but doesn’t that seem like a strange addition? Vodka sauce really does have vodka in it (it’d be stranger if it didn’t) although the alcohol, about 2 tablespoons worth, is pretty much all cooked off by the time you actually serve it.

So why add it to begin with? With other liquors that get cooked off like bourbon or brandy, they at least leave some flavor behind. But vodka is pretty flavorless to begin with. So what’s the point?

It turns out the vodka helps to emulsify the sauce, creating an ultra rich and velvety smooth texture. Actually, it’s pretty hard to describe the truly luxurious texture of vodka sauce, but I’d say it falls somewhere in between a silky tomato soup and a flavorful marinara, thanks in part to the lovely smooth texture of the tomato passata (DeLallo’s newest and, dare we say, best ever jarred tomato puree).

Finished with a splash of cream, this sauce is so good you’ll want to sop up every last bit of it with a piece of bread (or just lick it, no judgement here).

While this quick and easy vodka sauce recipe could be smothered over just about any pasta shape you can imagine, it works particularly well in this case with DeLallo’s mini potato gnocchi.

I’m a strong proponent of mini-sized foods (not so you eat less necessarily, lol) but full size gnocchi can be quite a gummy mouthful, especially if you’re using subpar gnocchi. DeLallo’s packaged potato gnocchi is the best I’ve encountered, and I particularly like the mini ones for their petite size and quick cooking time.

Which makes it extra suitable for this recipe, where the gnocchi is literally cooked in the same pan with the sauce.

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from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2TRrbOu