Roasted gnocchi has a wonderful added texture and bite that you can’t get from boiling alone. Toss it in a chunky vegan almond pesto for a fragrant, satisfying dinner.
The meal only takes about 25 minutes to make, because it uses frozen gnocchi.
I still remember that night at Heather’s apartment. We were in the wee days of our early twenties. I traversed the stairs to her place where she was boiling pasta.
We’d met in high school. But now she was newly married and cooking us dinner.
This was uncharted territory. Usually we were meeting over booths and plates of nachos.
Now she was married with living room shelves loaded with her husband’s Star Wars action figures. He had a vast array of Storm Troopers to create a full army of plastic men.
(My boyfriend at the time had decorated our living room with Lego sets. What can I say? We all had a type.)
My friend tossed hot pasta in deep green pesto from a jar.
Regardless of the jar, to my sensibilities it seemed straight up fancy. My go-to pasta sauces were also from jars, but stuffed with tomatoes and zucchini.
This one had the freshly cut grass smell of basil, notes of garlic, and the nutty depth of pine nuts.
Action figures or no, it all felt so adult, like new terrain we were treading. It felt like playing dress-up in these new lives as grown-ups.
Looking back on those days long ago, I can’t help but think of how much time has passed between then and now – not just in days and hours but in life phases.
At each step of our lives, it feels like now is the way it will always be. We’ll always fall asleep in these beds and wake up to this breakfast…
Until one day you realize you haven’t made that once-favorite meal or gone to that once-favorite restaurant in many moons.
The days are long, but the years are short
Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project, said, “The days are long, but the years are short.”
Each day has its routine. Going to the bank, doing the laundry, washing dishes…
They stretch to fill until suddenly you’re in an altogether different place. And yesterday’s normal is not today’s.
Yesterday’s fancy is today’s simple spring meal – chunky homemade vegan almond pesto with just-plucked basil and fresh-from-the-ground garlic.
It’s tossed with crisp-on-the-outside, pillowy-on-the-inside roasted gnocchi.
And it’s everything I need to revisit a full mouthful of spring… just add Storm Troopers.
What is gnocchi?
Gnocchi is an Italian dish.
It is also one of the most commonly mispronounced food words. If you’re American, it’s pronounced nok-ee or noh-kee. If you’re Italian, you already know how to pronounce it. Haha! (Italians pronounce it nyawk-kee.)
However you say it, gnocchi are little potato dumplings made with potatoes and flour (along with a variety of other ingredients).
Obviously, gnocchi can be made from scratch. However, for a quick lunch or dinner, I usually buy pre-packaged gnocchi.
(If you’d prefer to make it from scratch, there’s a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance that I like. I haven’t tried roasting it afterwards, though.)
How to find egg-free gnocchi
You can find gnocchi in shelf stable packages in the aisles of your grocery store or in the frozen section.
Gnocchi is often made with egg. So you’ll want to read the ingredients before purchasing.
My favorite gnocchi brand is in the frozen section from Rising Moon Organics. Their gnocchi is also gluten free. That means this whole dish is gluten-free if you’re using their pasta.
According to the package, the 8-ounce container of gnocchi serves two. If you’ll be having sides as well, it will cover two people for a light meal. But if you’re only having gnocchi and nothing else, I’d say it serves one well.
I used to make gnocchi by boiling it alone. Those are the directions on the package.
However, once I started roasting gnocchi, my boiling-only days were over.
Roasting takes simple gnocchi up a notch by adding extra chewiness and bite. It leaves mushy, boiled-only gnocchi in the dust.
Let’s face it, almost any dish is better with nutty brown spots from roasting.
How to roast it
To make roasted gnocchi, first cook the gnocchi according to package directions by boiling it. When the pillowy gnocchi rises to the top, you know it’s ready.
Drain the gnocchi. And then dry it on a clean kitchen towel.
Gnocchi roasts best when it’s dry. If there are pools of water on your baking sheet, you’re not going to get the results you want.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roast the gnocchi for ten minutes.
You’ll want to flip the gnocchi part way through cooking.
Wait until it is brown on one side. Then flip it over, and continue cooking for the remainder of time.
That will give the pillowy gnocchi a crusty browned exterior that has a wonderful texture and bite.
What sauce to serve with it?
Gnocchi is terrific with marinara, of course. But for a brighter take on roasted gnocchi, I like to toss it in homemade vegan pesto.
There are endless possibilities for pesto. You can use a variety of seeds, leafy greens, and add-ins.
For this recipe, I made a chunky vegan almond pesto. It’s heavy on the nuts and low on the oil. So the nuts keep a lot of their crunch.
If you’d like a smoother or more sauce-like pesto, you can add in fewer nuts and/or more oil. If you’re a fan of pistachios in pesto, try this pistachio pesto instead.
I like to add miso paste to my vegan pesto for added cheesiness.
For even more cheesiness, throw a Tablespoon or two of nutritional yeast flakes into the pesto.
Or finish the dish with grated vegan parmesan, as I did here. I used Violife parmesan.
What sides to serve with it?
Serve this roasted gnocchi with avocado caprese salad, an easy spinach salad, or red wine mushrooms.
It’s also nice finished with a sprinkling of vegan parmesan.
📖 Recipe
Roasted gnocchi with vegan almond pesto
Ingredients
- 8 ounce package gnocchi
- 1 teaspoon + 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil Plus more, if desired
- 1 ½ cups loosely packed basil leaves
- ½ cup loosely packed cilantro rough stems removed
- 1-2 cloves garlic depending on your preferences & clove size, minced
- 1 Tablespoon freshly-squeezed lemon juice
- ¼ cup roasted almonds
- 1 teaspoon white miso paste
- ¼ teaspoon salt or to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Boil gnocchi according to package directions and drain in a colander. Move the gnocchi to a clean kitchen towel to further dry. (Overly wet gnocchi won't roast as well.)
- Add drained, cooked gnocchi to a parchment paper-covered baking sheet. Toss gnocchi in 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil and spread evenly across the baking sheet.
- Roast in oven for 10 minutes, stopping once to flip the gnocchi for even roasting. (Only flip the gnocchi once one side is brown.) Remove from oven and set aside.
- In a food processor combine the basil, cilantro, garlic, lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, roasted almonds, miso paste, and salt. Be careful about adding too much salt if you’re using salted almonds since miso is salty as well. Process until it is fully combined and like a paste. Stop occasionally to scrape down the sides.
- If you'd like a smoother or saucier pesto, add extra virgin olive oil a Tablespoon at a time, until it reaches your desired consistency.
- In a large bowl combine the roasted gnocchi with pesto and serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Originally posted June 2013. Content updated March 2019.
chris
this recipe is delicious! it took me a couple times to get the baked gnocchi just right. you mention this – but it’s crucial to make sure you dry off the gnocchi after boiling as much as possible before baking. the addition of almond to the pesto is fantastic!
Cadry
Good note, Chris! And I’m so glad you enjoyed the dish. Thanks for the feedback!
Maggie Muggins
I couldn’t agree more with that quote! I’m pretty sure if my past self saw me now, her jaw would drop, and it all happened so subtly. As you’ve probably noticed, I love basil, and this sounds delicious, elegant and simple, just how I like it.
Cadry
Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could meet ourselves at different ages? Some things stay the same, but throughout our lives there are subtle shifts always happening as we have new experiences.
I’ve noticed your love of basil, and I couldn’t agree more. Whenever it arrives in the grocery store after a long winter, I can’t help but take in a long whiff and breathe in the smell of summer.
Louise Bloom
I love pesto and I will definitely try your version. I think I would be having a hard time finding gnocchi but I will try to get one. Thanks
Cadry
That’s great, Louise! If you don’t find gnocchi in the frozen section of your grocery store, most of the time it’s shelved with the other pastas in shelf-stable packaging. Good luck!
Kristy
The first time I ever had pesto was in a restaurant and I thought I was being very fancy and sophisticated for ordering something with such a fancy sauce. 😉
I love the miso in the pesto- it adds so much flavor! And I’m going to hunt down this brand of gnocchi- the twins love it and I haven’t made it since going vegan. 🙂
Cadry
Apparently all of us were very fancy! 🙂
Yes, I first learned about adding miso paste to pesto with the Spork Foods cookbook, Spork-Fed. I love the depth that it gives even better than adding nutritional yeast flakes. It’s kind of funny, because I think miso soup is just okay, but in sauces and dips, I’m wild about miso paste.
Good luck on finding the gnocchi!
Andrea
Have you ever seen gluten-free gnocchi? I think I’ll google that right now.
Cadry
No, surprisingly I’ve never seen that. It doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult to make since potato is such a big part of it in terms of binding and bulk. It just needs some kind of gluten-free flour then to make it a dough. If all else fails, you could make your own!
Debbie @ Live from La Quinta
Perfect timing. My husband received a basil plant for father’s day (a few other things too 🙂 ), and I love making pesto. I was also in the mood for gnocchi…I had picked up a package from Trader Joes (without looking at the label, don’t ask me why), had a plan for dinner, then got home from work and THEN read the label. Um, not vegan. I hope I can find a vegan brand, or I may (horror of horrors) have to make them from scratch!
Cadry
Aw! Too bad! Well, at least TJ’s has a good return policy. I’ve had a surprisingly hard time finding gnocchi locally that is both vegan and also doesn’t have a lot of unappealing ingredients. That’s why once I found Rising Moon in my Co-op’s freezer, I happily stopped looking.
Making your own gnocchi isn’t that difficult, but it does add time. Sometimes it’s nice to just have it done already! I’ve never tried roasting homemade gnocchi. You’ll have to let me know how it goes if you do it!
luminousvegans
Lovely post. I love the idea of revisiting oldies that stir up such interesting memories. The pesto looks delicious and I love that Rising Moon brand. Your basil plant is doing really well!
Cadry
Thank you! Food has a powerful way of linking to our histories and memories. It’s amazing how just a bite can transport you somewhere else.
That was a “before” picture of my poor basil plant. It’s a lot more naked now. 😉
An Unrefined Vegan
This brought back a lot of memories of my early cooking days and of course, those many transitions we go through as the years pass.
Wonderful combination of flavors – so summery – and I love gnocchi.
Cadry
Apparently we’re both in a reflective mood right now. I so enjoyed your piece from today about the five best decisions you’ve ever made. I wanted some time to marinate on the topic before commenting, but David and I had a really nice discussion over breakfast about the best decisions of our lives so far. Good food for thought!
Jackie at Vegan Yack Attack
This is so funny. I remember my first encounter with pesto, and it was from a jar that my mom had sitting in the back of the fridge for a while, years ago. I tasted it and fell in love, but nearly fainted at the oil content (I was a calorie counter back then). It really did seem fancy!
I haven’t had homemade pesto in a while, and gnocchi even longer! This looks delish. 🙂
Cadry
Yay! Apparently I was not alone in thinking that pesto = fancy. Perhaps in the past 15 years it’s just become more common in the average kitchen.
I think basil is the quintessential summer scent. Now that it’s here, you should get on that pesto making! 🙂
Caitlin Galer-Unti (@caitlingu)
I’ve never had or even heard of roasted gnocchi but it sounds great, I want to try now! Yum. I actually just had gnocchi with pesto (I discovered that a large supermarket chain near me now does vegan gnocchi so I’ve been having it this week). Wish I had some left so I could roast it but I ate all the gnocchi!
Cadry
I had never heard of roasted gnocchi either until I tested recipes for Terry Hope Romero’s cookbook, “Vegan Eats World.” After that, I couldn’t go back to making gnocchi any other way. It must be roasted! I hope you enjoy it the next time you refill your gnocchi supply! 🙂
Amanda (@PicklesNHoney)
I love that quote from Gretchen Rubin. I was actually just thinking of it today!
Your pesto recipe sounds fabulous. I only recently started liking pesto (crazy!) and now I need to make up for lost time. 🙂
Cadry
It’s so true, isn’t it? Each day feels like 24 hours like the one before it, and yet somehow every holiday and birthday I think, “How is it this time of year again?”
I’m glad you got on the pesto train! Do you know what changed your feelings about it?
Kelly @ Vegan Iowan
Brilliant! Gnocchi is one of my favorite foods, and I have 4 basil plants sprouting up in the backyard. Can’t wait to try this!
Cadry
Excellent! Good luck with your basil plants! I always seem to eat all of the leaves on my plants before they really have a chance to get going! #veganproblems 😉
FoodFeud
Looks so great! And roasted gnocchi? That is incredible! I’ve really been craving all kinds of pesto for the last week or so. Love the story, haha. I think one of my first fancy dinner parties, I made pesto-stuffed mushrooms and was impressed by how classy it looked.
Cadry
I learned about roasting gnocchi when I was testing recipes for Terry Hope Romero’s book, “Vegan Eats World.” After the first time, I was totally hooked and knew I could never go back to just boiling it. You’re going to love it!
I love it that I’m not the only one who conflated pesto with fanciness!
Barb@ThatWasVegan?
I haven’t made a pesto since going vegan, but it’s always been on my list. This looks delicious, and like the perfect spring (and summer!) meal.
Cadry
With summer upon us, now is the time! I really enjoy miso in pesto to give added richness and depth in place of animal-based cheese. Other times I’ll add nutritional yeast flakes for additional cheesiness.
Becky
Yum! I love gnocchi and pesto. I don’t think I’ve ever used almonds to make a pesto before, but I’m definitely going to try it once our basil plants take off!
Cadry
That’s something that I like about pesto. You can mix up the greens/herbs that you use or try out different nuts and seeds. It seems like in almost any combination it works out!