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This 5-minute romesco gnocchi sauce recipe is bursting with flavor. Serve it up with packaged gnocchi for a fast and easy dinner recipe in just 15 minutes! 

5 Minute Romesco Gnocchi Sauce Recipe
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If you know our cookbook Pretty Simple Cooking, you’ll know that Alex and my philosophy is against 5-minute this and 10-minute that. Why? If quick cooking time is the most important thing about a recipe, it cheapens the cooking process. It makes it seem like cooking is just about finding the magical super fast recipes, and not investing time in skills that deepen flavor.

However, sometimes life necessitates a quick dinner. Many requests come into our inbox like the following from reader Jean: “I struggle to put something healthyish on the table at lightning speed every night. I’d love to see a round up of some of your favorite crazy-fast meals.” Her request is the impetus for this 5 minute gnocchi sauce recipe: and it comes together into a dinner recipe in 15 minutes flat. Keep reading for the gnocchi sauce recipe.

Related: Easy Vegetarian Recipes for Beginners | Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi

5 Minute Romesco Gnocchi Sauce Recipe

How to make romesco gnocchi sauce

In the vein of “healthyish recipes at lightening speed”, here is our 5-minute gnocchi sauce recipe! It comes together with the gnocchi in just 15 minutes. I know what you’re thinking: Does it really take 15 minutes to make? Well, it does depend on your cooking style. But, here are the facts.

I made this gnocchi sauce recipe by myself between 5:54 and 6:09 on a Thursday night. True story. It requires no chopping and minimal “cooking.” The gnocchi sauce recipe takes 5 minutes to blend and the packaged gnocchi boils for 3 minutes. Because we wanted to add some leafy greens to this recipe to add nutrients, we’ve included a “trick” that we like to use as a time saver! Instead of cooking the spinach, we use the hot pasta water to quickly wilt it when draining the pasta. Combine the wilted spinach with the gnocchi sauce and cooked gnocchi and you’ve got dinner!

Though this recipe takes only 15 minutes, we’d suggest serving it with a salad, which would add a few minutes of prep time. This could also help to stretch the serving size: we found it fed me, Alex and Larson without leftovers, so we’d say the serving size is modest. You could also 1.5 to 2x the gnocchi, since the gnocchi sauce makes enough for a double recipe. Another great 15 minute gnocchi meal is our Easy Creamy Gnocchi, which we’d highly recommend as well!

Related: This recipe is included in our 28 Day Healthy Meal Plan

5 Minute Romesco Gnocchi Sauce Recipe

What are healthyish recipes?

Explain healthyish? To us, healthyish recipes are whole food meals prepared in your own kitchen. Gnocchi is Italian “pasta” that is made with potatoes and flour. Typically pasta isn’t considered health food, but good news: a new study found pasta can actually help you lose weight. The Italian researchers found that eaten in moderation, pasta can be part of a healthy diet.

As noted above, to the pasta, we’ve added some colorful veg: spinach and a romesco gnocchi sauce made of tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and almonds. This recipe is a vegan dinner fully plant-based as the feta crumbles are optional. It’s also gluten-free if you can find gluten-free gnocchi, or you can use gluten-free pasta. Per above, we’d suggest serving with a green salad.

Want more with almonds? We’ve got 15 great almond recipes for you to try.

This recipe is…

This 5 minute gnocchi sauce recipe is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free (modification below), plant-based, and dairy-free.

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Romesco Gnocchi Sauce Recipe

15-Minute Gnocchi with Romesco Sauce | A Couple Cooks
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This 5-minute romesco gnocchi sauce recipe is bursting with flavor. Serve it up with packaged gnocchi for a fast and easy dinner recipe in just 15 minutes!

  • Author: a Couple Cooks
  • Prep Time: 12 minutes
  • Cook Time: 3 minutes
  • Total Time: 15 minutes
  • Yield: 3 to 4 1x
  • Category: Main Dish
  • Method: Stovetop
  • Cuisine: Italian

Ingredients

Scale

For the gnocchi sauce (recipe uses 1 cup)

  • 1 cup roasted almonds
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 15-ounce can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
  • 2 large roasted red peppers from a jar
  • ½ tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt

For the gnocchi

Instructions

  1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil, seasoned with about 1 tablespoon kosher salt.
  2. Make the gnocchi sauce: Peel the garlic. In a blender or food processor, process all ingredients until smooth. Taste and add additional seasonings if desired.
  3. Once the water is boiling, add the gnocchi and boil until they float, about 2 to 3 minutes.
  4. Meanwhile, line a colander with spinach leaves. When the gnocchi are done, pour them into the colander with the spinach so that the boiling water wilts the spinach. Then pour the cooked gnocchi and spinach back into the pot and stir to a few times to evenly distribute the spinach.
  5. Add 1 cup of the romesco sauce to the pot and stir. (Reserve and refrigerate the remaining 1 ½ cups for up to 1 week.)
  6. For vegan, top with fresh ground black pepper. For vegetarian, top with black pepper and feta crumbles. If desired, add a drizzle of olive oil.

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Looking for fast and easy dinner recipes?

Outside of this 5 minute gnocchi sauce recipe, here are some of our favorite fast and easy dinner recipes on A Couple Cooks:

About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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25 Comments

  1. Monica Osborn says:

    Tried the Romescu Gnocchi for the first time with friends for dinner. All of us loved it! And, it was as quick and easy as promised. We topped it with the optional (we used fat free) feta for additional flavor and appeal. Served it with an Italian salad and Prosecco for a wonderful meal! Highly recommend.






  2. Edie says:

    Not sure what I did wrong…but mine did not look like this, and wasn’t crazy about the taste!

    Maybe I should try again.

  3. Veronica says:

    Hey there! Is there a specific reason to used canned roasted red pepper or can I use fresh? Thanks!! :) can’t wait to try this :)

    1. Alex Overhiser says:

      The flavor and texture of the jarred peppers is important for this one to turn out right!

  4. Jennifer L. Ramirez says:

    I just made this sauce and can’t believe how yummy it is! I’m now looking around my kitchen to see other ways I can use it! I didn’t have almonds so I subbed walnuts and it worked just fine. And then the only olive oil I could find in the house was truffle oil! So….I used it. Added a bit of depth, I think. SO good! Thank you for the great recipe!

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