Sheet Pan Gnocchi Dinner
Toss all the ingredients on a sheet tray and roast while you make a Dijon cream sauce. YUM!
you're making mealtime meaningful.
There’s no better weeknight dinner than a sheet pan dinner. Toss ingredients with oil, season with salt and pepper, then let the dish bake itself while you attend to everything else on your to-do list. When the bake is ready, whisk up a quick parmesan cream sauce with spinach and toss it all together. Cooking should be no simpler than this on weeknights! The flavors from the smoked sausage transforms the sauce into something I want to serve at my next barbeque. A quick, easy, and budget-friendly dinner that the whole family can enjoy! You may need to make a double-batch.
Whenever you using smoked sausage in a recipe it will always leech flavor into the final bite. In order to get the most from that flavor you want to render as much fat from the sausage as possible. Roasting the sausage on a sheet tray not only slowly renders fat, but also uses that fat to caramelize anything else it’s roasting in. For that reason, the tray needs to be tossed at least once to give the onions, peppers, and gnocchi a chance to soak up this rich sausage fat. You can use any sausage you like for this. Sub with chickpeas for a vegetarian or vegan version.
To create your ideal sheet pan dinner with your favorite vegetables that compliment each other. This technique can be applied with Asian flavors like a peanut sauce with fluffy rice cakes, or with Mexican flavors using chorizo instead of smoked sausage and drizzling with a queso sauce. Use this recipe as a toolbelt to build your own flavors with what you have on hand.
We finish off this dish with a creamy parmesan sauce that I tend to use when I’m making a quick sauce. Reduce your whipping cream over the heat to remove water and concentrate the fat enough to make a cream sauce with parmesan. This is the time to sneak in any green vegetables. I love spinach because it breaks down easily just being stirred into the hot cheese sauce. You can sub kale, cabbage, even broccoli. It’s unavoidable how good vegetables taste in a cheese sauce. This is my sneaky way to introduce kids to certain vegetables.
Sheet Pan Gnocchi Dinner
Yield(s): Serves 4
10m prep time
22m cook time
you're making mealtime meaningful.
Ingredients
- 1 lb Pre-packed gnocchi
- 14 oz. kielbasa, thick slices
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 2 bell peppers, diced
- 1/2 red onion, sliced thin
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 cups fresh baby spinach
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 cup Parmesan, finely grated
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1/4 cup fresh basil, torn
- Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 425º F.
- On a sheet tray, toss gnocchi, kielbasa, tomatoes, peppers, red onion, and 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
- Roast in the oven for 18 - 22 minutes, tossing halfway to ensure even cooking.
- In a saucepan, add heavy cream to the pan over medium-low heat reducing the cream by half.
- Whisk in the parmesan, minced garlic, and dijon mustard until a thick sauce is formed.
- Add in spinach to the cream mixture and let cook for 1 - 2 minutes or until wilted. Season with salt and pepper, then set aside.
- Finish sheet tray dinner with a drizzle of creamy spinach and enjoy!