When Lidl’s Italian week rolls around they often have stuffed gnocchi in the fridges but I felt it hard to justify the price difference between the cupboard stable ones when it’s around 2.5x more expensive.

I opted for the cheese gnocchi which is stuffed with little bits of ricotta and went about panfrying them with some olive oil, fresh tomatoes and basil leaves.

Let’s discuss the size of these. They are huge. You most certainly need to consider cutting them in half as part of your bite. When you do you will realise, they even with the amount of time I pan-fried them to get that colour and texture on the outside, that the inside is still a pretty solid texture and none of the cheese really melted. I feel that I might have needed to have boiled them before frying them but that then causes the outside to usually melt just in an attempt to get the middle looser and feeling more cooked.

The taste of them was pretty nice and enjoyable but I could only really taste that middle chunk of ricotta opposed to any cheese running through the actual gnocchi mix itself. They do a few other flavours of them during Italian week as well and perhaps I might enjoy the balance of them a bit more than I did these ones as I loved the size and texture overall but that middle really did let them down.

Here’s the kicker though. I know how to make fresh gnocchi but I live by myself so I simply don’t go to that much time and effort for myself. Would I switch to fresh more regularly even with the higher price tag? I think I would only take that switch if I found on I consistently loved and it was still a somewhat sensible price and then just keep some in the cupboard as back up.

If you buy fresh gnocchi in the UK I would love to know what your go to one is whether it’s regular, flavoured or filled and how much you normally grab it for?