Potato Cavatelli Recipe (2024)

Thank you for the recipe. Recipes are great generosities of the heart, but I wonder if this recipe might not benefit from a video? It is difficult to visualize, at least for me, how the dumpling should look.

here is a great pasta shaping video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZkudVYoZfc

Here’s a nice video which describes making Cavatelli. It’s in Italian, but the important points are that half the flour is semolina and half 00 flour (doppio zero), which is readily available in California and the east coast, as well as around Chicago. After making the dough, you let it rest before forming the cavatelli. The woman in the video does it the way my grandmother from Calabria made them.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PBz9HqSXbvU

Under most circ*mstances given the about of liquid called for relative to the flour & potato you're going to end up with wet mush as many have noted. Eliminate both the milk & oil substituting a splash or two of olive oil. Cut the eggs down to 2 or 3. Use all AP flour or a mix of AP & semolina. Proceed by the feel of the dough, adding lightly more flour or liquid as necessary. After a few minutes of kneading you want an elastic relatively light plump golden mound of dough.

A clear photo of Cavatelli is on Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavatelli#/media/File:Cavatelli.jpg. I would never have described 'em that way, but they DO look like hot dog buns.

"...to make two cups..." of "fluffy" potatoes or two cups of firmly packed potatoes? and roughly what do those large russets weigh? I get that this is cooking not baking and scientific precision isn't a requisite, but a better guideline than "large" would be most helpful. Please? Many thanks.

Me again ... just want to mention that I have seen some Italian relatives use the tines of a fork, gently, to roll the little dumplings, giving them a texture that increases their ability to collect the sauce better. Not entirely necessary though.

This recipe leaves out the essential stop of letting the dough rest for at least an hour.

I definitely agree with the general consensus that this is a recipe that cries out for a video. It would definitely make me more likely to try this recipe, since as of now I am a bit stumped by the description to "press down and away so the dough flattens and flips up over your thumb." Sounds like an improbable outcome without more instruction.

There are several YouTube videos - the quality on this one's not great, but if you start at minute 7:00, you can get a decent idea of how to shape them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59MaFRqVs6I

A little video or picture of what a cavatelli looks like would be very helpful here

When they say the amount of flour needed may vary greatly they’re not kidding! I added 6-7 cups of flour before I got the right texture. The finished product seemed about right so I don’t think I did it wrong—keep going until the texture is right!

This did not go well for me either. After 5+ cups of flour (and only 3 eggs), and a huge sticky mess, I made the best of it, but I think because I had to work it so much while adding the flour, I ended up with a gummy mess. The resulting cavatelli were not good. Next time I'll just go with gnocchi.

Could I use my cavateli maker with this recipe ?

Although I had the same issue with the ratios, the resulting cavatelli were fantastic: I loved how toothsome they were, particularly compared with homemade potato gnocchi (which are meant to be quite light).Like others, I would recommend using 2-3 eggs, skipping the milk, adding only a tablespoon or two of oil, and see how you get on with the flour.I stopped adding flour when I was able to roll a rope without too much trouble, despite the fact that the dough was still tacky. Buonissimo!

What’s the difference between Cavatelli and Gnocchi?

I think this recipe may have too many eggs. I've never made Cavatelli, but the recipe is almost identical to one I've used often to use up left over mashed potatoes to make gnocchi. That recipe calls for 2 cups of mashed potatoes and 1 egg. My mashed potatoes are usually somewhat stiff because we don't make them super soft and they've always been refrigerated for at least 24 hours.

This is very close to my family's gnocchi recipe, which used only Idaho potatoes boiled whole in their skins, flour salt, farm, and eggs. We used a food mill and always mixed by hand. I rolled the dumplings on a fork, and she boiled them dumplings immediately. The idea was to move quickly from forming the dough to cooking so that the dumplings would be tender. If Mom had a written recipe, I never found it. I can't imagine making gnocchi without her.

Four years later, this could still use a video or maybe even a couple of still shots to illustrate. I look forward to trying this. Thank you, Kim.

Highly inaccurate recipe...dough never forms despite dumping in 2x flour recipe calls for.

No clue how you could say this takes 45 minutes to make when it takes double that to fold each of these pastas

Thank you for the recipe. This is how my aunts used to make it. No problems here, Came out great. As far as the amount of flour to use-you just have to add until the consistency is right as in all other dough recipes. I don't know-maybe I am just one of those fortunate ones that was lucky enough to watch the process of making cavatelli through the years. I cheated at the end though and used a cavatelli maker!

Like many other readers, I found this recipe to be much too soft as given. I did not add the milk and used only 3 eggs and it still took over 4 cups of 00 flour to make a dough. Even after being allowed to rest for an hour, it was very soft. I think that you'd only need about 1/2 cup of potato and no liquid to make a firm dough. That said, they were easy to make after watching the Youtube videos posted by others, and quite tasty.

My mother's recipe for potato gnocci was almost the same, except that she added a large handful of grated parmesan. My job was to roll the ropes and shape the gnocci on the tines of a fork. I have to try this!

When they say the amount of flour needed may vary greatly they’re not kidding! I added 6-7 cups of flour before I got the right texture. The finished product seemed about right so I don’t think I did it wrong—keep going until the texture is right!

Under most circ*mstances given the about of liquid called for relative to the flour & potato you're going to end up with wet mush as many have noted. Eliminate both the milk & oil substituting a splash or two of olive oil. Cut the eggs down to 2 or 3. Use all AP flour or a mix of AP & semolina. Proceed by the feel of the dough, adding lightly more flour or liquid as necessary. After a few minutes of kneading you want an elastic relatively light plump golden mound of dough.

This recipe leaves out the essential stop of letting the dough rest for at least an hour.

This did not go well for me either. After 5+ cups of flour (and only 3 eggs), and a huge sticky mess, I made the best of it, but I think because I had to work it so much while adding the flour, I ended up with a gummy mess. The resulting cavatelli were not good. Next time I'll just go with gnocchi.