The $3.99 ALDI Freezer Find So Good I’m Buying 2 at a Time

Italian cuisine has some of my absolute favorite comfort foods. Lasagna, cacio e pepe, and Alfredo top my list, but I am also deeply enamored with gnocchi alla Sorrentina, a dish of handmade potato dumplings baked in a lightly spiced tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella. The gnocchi are incredibly tender and the mozzarella becomes creamy in the baked sauce. 

Rarely, if ever, would I make gnocchi alla Sorrentina at home. So I gasped in delight when I recently found ALDI’s Priano Sorrentina Gnocchi in the freezer section. I snatched up several bags, hoping they’d be half as good as the real thing—and I was not disappointed. 

Why I Love ALDI’s Priano Sorrentina Gnocchi

Priano is ALDI’s Italian store-brand line and includes everything from dried pasta and jarred sauces to frozen ravioli and cured meats. ALDI fans especially love the pantry staples like bronze cut dry pastas and ready-to-bake pastas. The Sorrentina Gnocchi can be found near the other Priano frozen pastas in ALDI’s freezer section for just $3.99, and the cooking instructions couldn’t be easier. 

The back-of-the-bag instructions call for heating a pan to medium and adding two tablespoons of olive oil, followed by the bag’s contents. There are a few bigger cubes of the tomato sauce and gnocchi and smaller pieces of mozzarella in the bag. You’ll stir this all together in the pan for a bit, then cover and simmer for about 5 minutes. You can add more cheese or a splash of cream as some Reddit users suggest, but otherwise the dish is ready to eat in just a few minutes. 

My only critique of the Priano Sorrentina Gnocchi is that I wish the bags were bigger! The 16-ounce bag isn’t all pasta and feels like just enough for two (even though the bag claims to serve three), and my husband and I both wanted seconds of the pillowy dumplings in their warmly spiced sauce.

But at less than a package of gnocchi costs in a regular grocery store, I don’t mind doubling up on this comfort dish in the future. This seems to be one of ALDI’s popular seasonal finds, so grab it while you can to stock your freezer.

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