Cauliflower Gnocchi | The Modern Proper (2024)

June 14, 2022

With just three ingredients, this homemade cauliflower gnocchi recipe is a healthier spin on our favorite comfort food.

Can’t Find Cauliflower Gnocchi? Make It Yourself!

We know you love Trader Joe’s cauliflower gnocchi. And honestly so do we. But the thing is—why settle for store bought cauliflower gnocchi when homemade is well within reach? Also, they are so often sold out! It’s really nice to be able to pivot and just make DIY cauliflower gnocchi recipe. All the pillowy, lower-carb gnocchi goodness that you’re craving, without worrying about the supply chain. Once you get the hang of this homemade cauliflower gnocchi, *you* are your own supply chain!

3-Ingredient Cauliflower Gnocchi

Yeah, it’s that easy. Three ingredients are all it takes! And not to seem like we’re knocking TJs—because we love that place—but their cauliflower gnocchi has quite a few more than three ingredients. It's a processed food, that’s sort of part of the deal. And hey, there’s a time and a place for everything. But we love to simplify where we can, and making our beloved cauliflower gnocchi from simple, familiar ingredients feels like a good move. All you’ll need to make it is:

• Cauliflower
• Flour
• Salt

How To Make Cauliflower Gnocchi From Scratch

It’s really easy to make cauliflower gnocchi from scratch, you just need to be OK with sticky dough. Because this gnocchi dough is super soft. It might feel weird at first because you are sort of shaping it rather than rolling it like a traditional pasta dough. Just push through, and resist the urge to add more flour! If you want tender gnocchi, just power through that stickiness. Trust the process—you can do it! Here’s how to make them:

1. Steam the cauliflower until it’s fully cooked and almost mushy.
2. Squeeze all of the water out of the cauliflower using a kitchen towel. And we mean all of it!
3. Blitz! Give the cauliflower a good pulse in a food processor along with the flour and salt.
4. Shape the dough! FYI, the dough will be soft. Resist the urge to add more flour. Just accept the stickiness and work with it, and do your best to shape it into a ball. Cut the ball into eight even pieces.
5. Shape or “roll” each of those eight pieces into a rope.
6. Cut each dough rope into 1-inch gnocchi.

How To Cook Cauliflower Gnocchi

Once you’ve made and shaped the dough, you’ll have to decide how you’d like to cook the gnocchi. You can either:

• Boil it! This is the classic preparation for traditional gnocchi, and yields pillowy, doughy little dumpling-like balls of carby (less carby, in this case) goodness.
• Sauté it! If you prefer a little more of a textural experience, sauté the gnocchi in a nice hot pan with some oil. We recommend an eight-minute sauté, and if they’re not done at the end of that cooking time, pour in a bit of oil and steam them to finish. Because they have raw flour in them, you really need to be sure they’re cooked through.

Tools You’ll Need:

• Steamer basket
• Food processor
• Knife
• Colander or strainer
• Sauté pan

How To Serve Cauliflower Gnocchi

Because gnocchi is just the best, and cauliflower gnocchi is lower carb, so that means we can eat it more often! Yay and yay. Here are a few delicious ways to serve it:

• Brown Butter Sage Cauliflower Gnocchi
• Baked Gnocchi
• Mushroom Alfredo Cauliflower Gnocchi
• Baked Gnocchi with Broccoli

You Can Do It!

You can make your own cauliflower gnocchi! We promise. You’ll have this one down in no time. And when you make it, we’d like to hear all about it! Share a photo and tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper so that we can see your stuff! Happy eating!