Oat Gnocchi With Shaved Asparagus & Brown Butter Vinaigrette

Author Notes

There’s a lot of back and forth about the benefits of batch cooking—making a large amount of any given recipe, to have as leftovers throughout the week. Traditionally, I’ve never taken to it. I would make a gallon of lentil soup and piously eat it every day, first marveling at my efficiency, then bemoaning the redundancy. Eventually it occurred to me: Instead of making a big batch of lentil soup, why not cook a big batch of lentils and use them different ways? Prep the , instead of the finished dish, so that ingredient can be used speedily while mitigating boredom along the way.

Because stone-ground oats (aka Irish oats or steel-cut oatmeal) take longer to cook than rolled, they’re wonderful for batch cooking. I've started making more in one go than I can eat at a single breakfast, with plans for a fast reheat on subsequent days. While they’re often served with dried fruit or maple syrup, oats have a nutty flavor and creamy texture that pairs well with savory food. Plus, oats are incredibly good for us—high in protein, iron, soluble fiber, and the only cereal to contain avenanthramide antioxidants.

(Pro tip: Oatmeal boils over when the liquid gelatinizes the starch, trapping the boiling water bubbles no matter how much you stir. Use a larger pot than you think you need to give more surface area for the bubbles to build up without overflowing.)

Maybe there is a place for oats at dinner, I thought one morning as I plopped my leftover oatmeal into a pot to reheat for Day Two breakfast. The oatmeal came out of the container as a perfect square—exactly as polenta would when cooked, cooled, sliced, and pan-fried. Looking through a collection of gnocchi recipes, I read once that any sort of dumpling counts, including those griddled polenta cakes. And so, the oat gnocchi (gnoatcchi). Here’s the gist:

Take leftover oatmeal and cut into rectangles (or really any shape you like). Dredge these in some sort of flour (I like to blitz some oats in a food processor or blender to make flour, but you can also use wheat flour or cornmeal). Pan-fry in a generous amount of fat until golden brown on all sides and warm in the center.

The accompanying salad is dressed in brown butter vinaigrette, another one of my favorite big batch recipes. I find it easier to brown butter in larger amounts, so I usually double the volume and keep it in the fridge for flavor-boosted dinners. The vinaigrette mixes brown butter and olive oil for a silkier mouthfeel (an all-butter dressing can congeal as it cools on raw vegetables, which isn’t as pleasant).

This recipe features asparagus, which in the northern Midwest, is at its peak right now, in June. The fat stalks are the easiest to shave into wide raw ribbons. If you’d like, you can roast the stalks instead, or substitute whatever vegetable looks best at the market or is already in your kitchen. I’ve made this with carrots, cauliflower, parsnips, green beans, and zucchini, and have yet to be disappointed. —abraberens

Test Kitchen Notes

Every month, in Eat Your Vegetables, chef, Ruffage cookbook author, and former farmer Abra Berens shares a seasonal recipe that puts vegetables front and center (where they should be!). Missed an installment? Head here to catch up. —The Editors