Boil or fry potatoes, just like you would if you were serving them alone. Next, peel their skin and cut them into smaller pieces, allowing all the steam to escape.

When they are cool enough, you can also use a potato ricer for better consistency. If you don’t have a potato ricer, you can use a fork or other kitchen tools to mash the potatoes into a uniform mass.

Prepare all the ingredients you will need for making the dough. These would be potatoes, wheat flour, egg, ricotta cheese if you’re using it, and salt and pepper.

To make your dough add the mashed egg to the potato mass and mix them together. At this point, potatoes should still be warm (but not too warm) for the eggs to easily mix with them. Add your cheese and spices as well.

The next step would be adding the flour. Just like with a standard dough, the amount of flour needed will depend on how much moisture remains in the mass with wet ingredients. If you stick to our recipe, 90g of flour should be enough.

Now it’s time to mix everything and knead the dough. When you’re done, the dough should feel dry and firm. Roll the dough into a ball and cut it into four even pieces.

Roll out each dough piece into snake-like, oblong pieces. Use your hands to do this, instead of just your fingers, to make sure the dough stays intact and you’re not placing too much pressure on its sections.

Cut the long pieces into small, 3/4-inch thick pieces. You can now mark your gnocchi using fork tines to give them the characteristic ridges you often see on traditional gnocchi.

Place your gnocchi on the parchment-lined baking sheet dusted with flour. Remember not to place the dumplings on top of each other, as they might stick to one another.

Add gnocchi to the boiling salted water, letting them simmer for around 2 minutes.

After this time, you should see gnocchi floating to the surface. Wait for one more minute and remove them from the water. Drain them and let them rest for about 2 minutes before preparing them for serving.

If you have lots of dumplings and a not-so-big pot, a good tip is to boil the gnocchi in batches in order to avoid them sticking to each other in the process.