Maple Sausage Gnocchi Skillet

Looking for a maple sausage dinner recipe? This maple sausage gnocchi skillet comes together all in one pan for a relatively quick weeknight meal. No boiling is needed for the gnocchi, which are combined with sweet potato, maple sausage, and sage for a flavorful dinner recipe the whole family will love.

This recipe began as a mistake. And a pretty big one, at that!

Intending to make this gnocchi with Italian sausage recipe, I realized the ground Italian sausage I'd pulled from the freezer was still a solid block. Rather than mess around with quick defrosting methods, I chopped up some fully-cooked chicken sausage links in its place.

About three seconds after they went into the pan (and thankfully before I poured in the marinara) I realized they were maple chicken sausage. Whoops!

With a few ingredient adjustments to adapt to this flavor swerve, we actually ended up LOVING this unlikely maple + sausage + gnocchi flavor combination so much that this version, with a few tweaks, found its place in our regular dinner rotation.

Reasons to Love This Recipe

• Using maple sausage in particular along with sage makes this dish just scream comfort food. I crave this flavor combination!
• Everything cooks in one pan, from the sausage to the vegetables to the gnocchi, reducing the number of dishes needing to be washed.
• Extra portions reheat very well for a top-notch lunch or quick leftover dinner.

Recipe Ingredients

• Maple sausage: Any type of maple-flavored sausage product will likely work here (more discussion on the various kinds below). Even my homemade breakfast sausage recipe, with its hearty dose of maple syrup, would be a good option.
• Gnocchi: I use the shelf-stable kind found in the dry pasta aisle, keeping in mind they'll be pan-toasted and not boiled.
• Chicken broth: Though it's hard to tell in the finished pictures, two cups of broth reduce down to provide the base for an ultra creamy "sauce". It's one of my favorite tricks to employ when making gnocchi. I always use reduced-sodium.
• Sage: This pairs with the maple sausage and sweet potato well to bring a warm and cozy flavor. You can use only dried sage varieties if it's inconvenient to get fresh sage.

What Type of Maple Sausage to Use?

While the maple flavor makes the type of sausage used kind of particular, I've tested this maple sausage gnocchi recipe with several different types.

Ground maple sausage, found in a tube near the bacon in the supermarket, is a great option if you can find it. This is raw so you'll need to fully cook and crumble it.

If you can't find ground maple sausage, this also works with sliced maple chicken or turkey sausage links. These will likely be fully cooked already, so they'll just need to be heated thoroughly until browned in the pan as the first step. Then slice and add back to the pan at the end.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Brown the ground sausage in a pan, breaking it into crumbles as it cooks. Transfer the cooked sausage to a plate so you can use the pan again.
2. Heat a portion of the olive oil in the (now empty) pan and cook the sweet potato and onion until softened and golden. Transfer the veggies to another plate so you can use the pan one more time.

3. Now swirl together the remaining olive oil and the butter until melted. Add the gnocchi to the pan and toast it, stirring so that all sides turn golden-brown and no gnocchi are left sticking to one another.
4. Next pour in the chicken broth. It will look very soupy at this point, but keep it cooking over medium heat.

5. The broth will bubble up and begin to reduce. Stir everything up periodically.
6. You want to aim for the broth to coat the gnocchi like a thick sauce, as seen in the bottom right photo.

7. Add back the cooked and crumbled maple sausage and sweet potato, then add the sage, salt, and pepper. Stir everything up to combine, adjust the seasonings to taste, and then serve.

Recipe Tips and Tricks

• You don't have to dice the sweet potato so small, but I wanted smaller pieces that wouldn't take a long time to cook. If using larger sweet potato chunks, increase the cooking time as appropriate before adding the onion.

• Rubbed sage is used in this maple sausage gnocchi skillet, which consists of dried sage leaves that have been rubbed into a fluffed up powder. I find it more easily incorporates into a recipe in an even manner, so one bite isn't super heavy on the sage and the next it's missing entirely. You'll notice a few fresh sage leaves as garnish here simply because I found I had a few leftover from other recipes, but they're not necessary. See the recipe card below for substitution quantities for other forms of sage.

Related Recipes

If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, I’d love for you to leave a star rating in the recipe card and/or a comment review below!