Rapini with Sausage and Pasta is an Italian classic. This sheet pan gnocchi version combines those same flavors: savory Italian sausage cooked with garlic, shallots and a touch of red pepper flakes, rapini (broccoli rabe), gnocchi, and a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. It’s the perfect dish for a busy weeknight and totally delicious. If you haven’t baked gnocchi before, this will be a real treat – they are tasty little morsels of pillowy dough with slightly crisp exterior and marinated in the pan juices thanks to those bursting tomatoes, herbs and spices and the flavour from the rest of the veggies and sausage. It is one of my favorite sheet pan meals especially for a busy weeknight dinner and it will quickly become your favourite too.
Do I Need To Cook The Gnocchi First?
When It comes to baked gnocchi that is one of the most popular questions I get. The answer is NO – you do not have to boil, or precook the gnocchi in this recipe. How is that possible? The tomatoes are a big part of this recipe – they pop while they roast, creating just a little bit of juicy sauce for the whole mix and for the gnocchi to steam then sort of puff up then get nice crusty or crisp edges. Baking them this way gives you a tasty and unique texture to the gnocchi similar to pan frying them – as opposed to them being in a tomato based sauce or a cream sauce.
Sheet Pan Gnocchi Recipe Ingredients
- GNOCCHI: I use potato gnocchi or potato dumplings that cook directly on the sheet pan. The ones I use are either the shelf-stable gnocchi kind you can easily get in the pasta aisle at the grocery store or the fresh ones in the cold fresh pasta section. Feel free to use any brand you like and this will even work with cauliflower gnocchi.
- SAUSAGE: Uncooked Italian sausage is what I always use. Any variety of sausage will work here but I like to use Italian sausage which adds a lot of flavor to this dish. Feel free to use chicken sausage or turkey Italian sausage but pork sausage is more classic and has even more flavor. Feel free to use sweet or hot I sausages. I prefer to remove the sausage casings but if you prefer to leave it on and slice the sausage into ½-1 inch pieces you can.
- RAPINI: Also known as broccoli rabe, rapini is a leafy green vegetable with small broccoli-like buds, and slightly bitter-tasting thin stalks and leaves.
- SHALLOT & GARLIC: I used a shallot but you can easily use a small red onion or yellow onion. Use as much or a little garlic as you like
- CHERRY TOMATOES: The tomatoes are a big part of this recipe – they pop while they roast, creating just a little bit of juicy sauce for the whole mix. I love cherry tomatoes but grape tomatoes will work too
- SPICES: I use Italian seasoning, fennel seeds, chili flakes and salt and pepper.
- OLIVE OIL: To toss the veggies with and it along with the tomatoes create a delicious sauce for the gnocchi
- PARMESAN CHEESE: Freshly grated Parmesan cheese sprinkled after everything has baked is always delicious.
- LEMON JUICE: Balances out the flavors with a little acidity and adds flavor to the pan sauce
- ALTERNATE ADD INS: Feel free to add some fresh herbs like fresh parsley or fresh basil to garnish for extra flavor. Feel free to add some extra veggies – some slices mushrooms would be delicious here.
How to Make Sheet Pan Gnocchi With Sausage & Rapini
- SPREAD gnocchi directly from the package onto a sheet pan with tomatoes, shallots, garlic, spices, and rapini.
- DRIZZLE with olive oil
- TOSS Everything really well until well coated
- SPREAD everything evenly on the large baking sheet and add the pieces of sausage evenly over the gnocchi and veggies
- ROAST until sausage is cooked through, broil for the last couple minutes for crispy edges.
The key to really good sheet pan dinners
It doesn’t get easier when it comes to dinner thanks to the sheet pan. The key to really good sheetpan dinners is making sure you give everything, all ingredients their own piece of sheetpan real estate. For things to really get golden crisp they need to be hitting the pan not layered over top of other ingredients. If you over crowd the ingredients will definitely cook but things may not get as crispy or cook as evenly. If you have a very large pan that is great but if not feel free to use two small sheet pans too, that way everything is touching the pan while roasting.
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