Though butter and milk are common additions to mashed potatoes, our favorite recipe uses olive oil and Manchego cheese to achieve its silky texture and richness.Chefs and home cooks love garlic in mashed potatoes. We found that it is best when slow-cooked to soften its flavor.For the best texture, mash potatoes by hand, whether with a fork, potato masher, or ricer. Avoid excess mixing, which can happen fast in a stand mixer — it can make the texture gluey and pasty.
Mashed potatoes: The simple thought of them ignites nostalgia, comfort, and cravings. Smothered in gravy or served simply with a pat of butter and a sprinkle of pepper, they’re a match for almost any protein yet hearty enough to anchor the best vegetarian meal. Sparking delight from diners of all ages, they make a fine addition to a weeknight dinner or a gourmet accompaniment to a holiday roast.
Deceptively simple, a mashed potato recipe needs just a few ingredients (and a good bit of elbow grease). But what separates the everyday bowl from a transcendent spud experience? I prepared five of Food & Wine’s tried-and-true mashed potato recipes to find out. Alongside a team of testers from the People Inc. Test Kitchen, I tasted every recipe, focusing foremost on flavor and texture, to determine which ingredients and extra steps elevate this already pretty-perfect side.
The techniques and twists varied widely, from using six sticks of butter (!) to incorporating béchamel, but my top pick’s flavor and process were relatively simple. Read on for more of my spud discoveries.
Winner: José Andrés’ Mashed Potatoes with Manchego and Olive Oil
Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley
Cook time: 35 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Spanish-American chef José Andrés’ first restaurant, Jaleo, brought Spanish flavors to the Washington, D.C., area while popularizing tapas-style dining. Since then, he’s opened over 40 restaurants worldwide and worked tirelessly to fight world hunger through his game-changing nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, becoming an Emmy-winning TV personality and New York Times best-selling author along the way. He also makes some of the finest mashed potatoes I’ve ever tasted.
Andrés includes garlic in his recipe for Mashed Potatoes with Manchego and Olive Oil, but with a crucial twist: He oven-roasts them in a foil pouch with olive oil until they’re meltingly tender. Once cool enough to handle, the cloves are squeezed from their papery skin and mashed with a fork into a paste. Meanwhile, peeled baking potatoes (I used russets) are boiled in salted water until tender.
After being drained, they’re returned to the pot to cook for one more minute while being shaken to evaporate excess moisture. (This ensures a drier, fluffier potato.) The potatoes are then mashed by hand with warm heavy cream. Once the mix is smooth, finely diced young Manchego cheese (ideally aged three to six months) is slowly stirred in to melt. Finally, olive oil is emulsified into the mix, with one additional tablespoon drizzled on top. (Those who love olive oil as much as I do, however, can and should finish with a heavier hand.)
Other tasters loved the nutty Manchego and fruity finish of olive oil. I found the cooking process to be as simple and straightforward as an everyday mash, requiring no special tools, yet it results in an elevated side fit for a holiday roast. This dish is also deeply satisfying on its own — it could anchor a meal with a green salad and an assertive vinaigrette. This was the clear winner of my tests.
Runner up: Justin Chapple’s Garlic-and-Herb Mashed Potatoes
Photo by Christopher Testani / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Prissy Lee
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Food & Wine culinary director at large Justin Chapple knows his way around both restaurant and home kitchens. A professionally trained chef, recipe developer, video host, and author of Just Cook It! and Mad Genius Tips, Chapple is known for his ingenious food hacks and creative cooking techniques. His trick for Garlic-and-Herb Mashed Potatoes is skipping fresh garlic and herbs in favor of a spreadable cheese flavored with those ingredients already.
As a devoted consumer of Boursin and Alouette cheeses, I was amazed by this addition. These fresh cheeses imbue not only the essence of garlic and herbs but also tang and richness, making heavy cream, sour cream, and butter unnecessary.
Yukon Gold or purple potatoes are simmered in salted water, drained well, then passed through a potato ricer back into the pot. The cheese is crumbled or dolloped over the hot potatoes alongside milk and gently folded in. The cheese melts quickly into the hot potatoes, minimizing the need to stir.
The end result was creamy, fluffy, and wonderfully tangy, with flavors reminiscent of a sour cream and onion potato chip. This recipe couldn’t be easier to make and was the fastest of the group to put together, making it perfect for a holiday spread or a weeknight dinner. It came in a close second to my top pick.
Great for garlic lovers: Marcus Samuelsson’s Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Food & Wine / Photo by Jen Causey / Food Styling by Julian Hensarling / Prop Styling by Josh Hoggle
Cook time: 25 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Marcus Samuelsson doesn’t shy away from garlic in his mashed potato recipe. A distinguished restaurateur, James Beard Award–winning chef, and Emmy-winning television personality who often judges cooking shows like Chopped, Samuelsson uses Yukon Golds or fingerlings and elephant garlic to create a golden, creamy, garlicky mix.
In his recipe, the potatoes and peeled garlic cloves are simmered together until tender in a combination of milk (whole or 2%), heavy cream, and thyme. The dairy mixture is pulled off and reserved while the potatoes and garlic are fork-mashed for a creamy yet rustic texture. Both melted butter and olive oil are mixed in for decadence along with a pinch of aromatic nutmeg, freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and salt and pepper. If needed, the reserved combo of milk and cream can be stirred back into the potatoes to achieve the perfect serving consistency.
As much as my Italian-American heart loves the combo of garlic and Parmesan, these potatoes were a bit garlicky for my personal taste. Simmering the cloves in milk barely mellowed the flavor, leaving the final dish with a distinct bite of raw garlic. But if you enjoy an extra-garlicky mash, this may be the recipe one for you. Keep in mind that it may be difficult to hunt down elephant garlic, which can be more expensive than the standard head. Still, this recipe gets bonus points for final creaminess and smart reuse of the starchy cooking liquid.
Great with classic French food: Julia Child’s Mashed Potatoes with Garlic
Food & Wine / Photo by Jake Sternquist / Food Styling by Lauren McAnelly / Prop Styling by Sue Mitchell
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
Many of the classic recipes we routinely cook are rooted in French technique. When compiling a list of recipes to test, I couldn’t skip pommes purée, the decadent French predecessor of mashed potatoes. I immediately turned to the late Julia Child and her famous purée de pommes de terre à l’ail, or garlic mashed potatoes.
A long-standing Food & Wine contributor, Julia Child is best known for bringing traditional French cuisine to the American home in the 1960s via cookbooks like Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the television show The French Chef. Her famous mashed potato recipe, however, deviates from a classic pommes purée with the inclusion of béchamel and a jaw-dropping 30 cloves of garlic.
Peeled whole garlic cloves are sweated slowly in butter to soften their texture and sharp flavor. Flour is then added to make a light roux before boiling milk is whisked in to create a thick, garlicky béchamel. The sauce is passed through a fine-mesh sieve or pureed before being beaten into cooked and riced russet potatoes. The whole thing is finished with more butter, heavy cream, and parsley. I was looking forward to some of the richest, creamiest, most garlicky mashed potatoes I’ve tasted.
The results surprised me. The garlic flavor was present but mellow thanks to the many cloves’ lengthy butter bath. While nicely seasoned, the dish ended up with a texture that, for me, was slightly pasty due to the combination of the flour-based béchamel and vigorous mixing. However, these potatoes make a great side for anything saucy, such as Coq au Vin, as they soak up the sauce well.
Best for butter lovers: Anthony Bourdain’s Mashed Potatoes, Kind of Robuchon-Style
Diana Chistruga
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
The late Anthony Bourdain started his career as a line cook in gritty New York City restaurant kitchens. His honest account of this experience led to his New York Times best-selling book, Kitchen Confidential, and he ultimately became a celebrity chef, world traveler, and TV documentarian. Before bursting into the media spotlight with celebrated shows such as No Reservations and Parts Unknown, though, Bourdain spent years as the executive chef of the French brasserie Les Halles in NYC. It’s no surprise, then that for his mashed potatoes Bourdain took inspiration from a famed French chef: Joël Robuchon.
With just four ingredients, this recipe appears simple, but its secret lies in its technique and a shocking amount of decadence. Whereas it was the huge number of garlic cloves in Julia Child’s recipe that astounded me, it’s the six sticks (yes, 1 1/2 pounds) of butter in this recipe that took me by surprise.
Large pieces of peeled Yukon Gold potatoes are boiled in salted water until tender then drained and left to dry for a few minutes. The potatoes are pressed through a ricer, returned to the pan, and stirred over moderate heat to dry further. Then the fun begins: Cubed butter is added in four batches, stirred vigorously between each addition to emulsify the mixture. Finally, heavy cream is added and the mix is seasoned to taste.
An important note: These potatoes must be served and eaten immediately. As soon as they hit my plate and started to cool even the slightest bit, they began to set like…a stick of butter. The flavor was overwhelmingly buttery, dimming the earthy Yukon Golds. Given the level of richness, I couldn’t imagine serving these with an indulgent main. Perhaps my least favorite part of the dish was the texture. The five minutes of continuous stirring required to emulsify all of the fat resulted in a slightly gluey mash. If you really love butter and are seeking a most decadent side dish, however, this recipe could be for you.
Final takeaways
This showdown demonstrated that more fat is not always better and that sometimes less really is more. While the richer mashed potatoes from Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain were flavorful and indulgent, the amount of stirring it took to incorporate the béchamel and butter, respectively, left their consistencies less appealing than some of the others.
The top two recipes, from José Andrés and Justin Chapple, succeeded by using clever ingredient swaps and simple techniques to create dishes both appealing in taste and texture. I also picked up some great tips, such as drying excess moisture from the potatoes before mashing and using a potato ricer for the finest consistency. Ultimately, if any of these dishes appeared on my dinner table, I’d be thrilled.
Dining and Cooking