Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Pumpkin Gnocchi - Aldi

Pumpkin Gnocchi - Aldi
More savory pumpkin treats! Thank the foodie gods! I love the crazy influx of pumpkin related goods each fall, but almost all of them are desserts. After a few years, all of these pumpkin spiced sweets are slowly killing me! Where's the variety?  Thankfully Aldi really delivered this year. I got pumpkin pasta sauce, 3 different kinds of ravioli, stuffing, croutons and gnocchi! How awesome is that?

The ravioli have been a bit hit or miss as far as savory fall dishes are concerned, but I have high hopes for these gnocchi!


The packaging is similar to the Aldi Specially Selected Pumpkin  Ravioli I just reviewed, but this version is shelf-stable, and you get a lot more pasta for your money. This easily serves three people, while the ravioli can serve 2, if you're not especially hungry.

I like the imagery on the front of the package, and the creative use of the cut out window to show the real gnocchi inside, but it's just a clear shrink-wrapped bag with a sticker on it. It's nice, but it's not much to talk about.

Inside the gnocchi have a slightly orange tinge to them, and they smell...kind of like tea? How is this possible? The scent is really appealing, and kind of sweet, but it's not at all what I expected. These smell like something I would drink at Teavana! Is that normal? I guess the sweetness comes from the squash-y dehydrated pumpkin, but I never expected it to smell quite this sweet. Hopefully they cook up and taste more savory when the dish is put together.

I boiled some water and these cooked up easily and quickly, but the water that was left in the pot definitely smelled like some kind of fall flavored tea. I was kind of tempted to drink it, but I (wisely) refrained myself from doing so.

In a separate pan I made a roux, added some whole milk, some shredded Parmesan cheese, some black pepper, red pepper flake, and pinch of salt to create my own Alfredo sauce. Since I had some spinach on hand, I decided to get fancy and added a bit of that to the sauce too. Once everything was creamy and the spinach wilted, I tossed the gnocchi with the sauce and dinner Was served!  Super easy, looks fancy, and smells awesome!


On their own, the gnocchi taste starchy, slightly sweet and squashy. They're yummy, but they need a sauce to help them out, and Alfredo was definitely the way to go. The sweet pumpkin flavoring paired nicely with the salty cheese sauce, and the spinach prevented this from being entirely unhealthy.

Do these taste like pumpkin? Not really, they're more potato-y than anything else, but they were yummy! Gnocchi are one of my favorite dishes, with Alfredo or Pesto, so I would totally buy another package of these, but they didn't have the savory pumpkin payoff I was hoping for.
On a Pumpkin Scale of 1-5 (5 being the most pumpkin-y) I’d give this a 1.5! They're delicious, but not very pumpkin-y at all. You might as well be eating a while wheat or plain gnocchi and telling everyone there's pumpkin in it. It's good, but not very flavorful for a seasonal product.
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
Like me on facebook to keep up with all my adventures!

1 comment:

  1. We also bought these, I was careful cooking them. They fell apart to mashed potatoes. I thought they had no pumpkin flavor at all. My husband eats anything but not these!

    ReplyDelete