I had been wanting to see if I can make a 7 minute gnocchi recipe for ages.  I love gnocchi and it’s normally quick to make.  I have made Amuse Your Bouche’s toasted gnocchi salad a few times and it only takes 15 minutes to pull together.

The I discovered mini gnocchi at my local supermarket.  When trying to cook quickly, small is good.  I was sure that I could use these to make a gnocchi dish in 7 minutes.  Today I am sharing the trial and error process that goes into making a 7 minute recipe.

My experiments confirmed that toasted gnocchi salad in 7 minutes was not to be.  My stove top is electric and really slow to heat up, which did not help.  But even when I excluded the time spent waiting for the pan to warm up it still took longer than 7 minutes.  Melting butter and then toasting gnocchi takes at least 7 to 10 minutes.  There is no rushing that toasty goodness.

My next step was to trial making gnocchi in the microwave, the go to appliance for quick cooking.  I started off based on some of the recipes I had seen on the internet microwaving the mini gnocchi for 2 or 3 minutes. This was way too long for mini gnocchi.  I made a lot of batches of gluggy unappealing gnocchi.

Four batches later I think I have finally determined the best procedure for microwaving mini gnocchi.

1. Put 1/2 a cup of water in the microwave and heat until boiling.  This takes 45 seconds in my microwave.
2. Add a cup of dried mini gnocchi to the water and microwave for 40 seconds
3. Remove and add straight to pasta sauce.  If you leave them sitting for any length of time they will become cold and gluey.

Unfortunately I used up all the mini gnocchi in testing, so I did not end up cooking a sauce to go with them.  Dinner tonight was trial batches of gnocchi with feta cheese and rocket.

I will go shopping again and buy more mini gnocchi to cook up and share in a full recipe.   I am thinking maybe with a cheese sauce like in Broccoli with cheese sauce recipe I shared recently.