The Best Mashed Potatoes 2 Ways

A classic simple homemade mashed potato maximized, and a fancy version.

Recipe: https://www.joshuaweissman.com/recipes/the-best-mashed-potatoes-2-ways

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Everybody thinks they have the greatest mashed potato recipe. That’s not possible because it’s right here. [Music] Mashed potatoes. There are many ways to make it and most mashed potatoes are decent, but there are small details in the technique that really make a big difference. So, I’m bringing my mom in today to make her oldfashioned mashed potatoes. We’ll walk through that and then I’m going to make my own, which will be a more complicated sort of robon inspired potatoes. Two completely different potatoes, two completely different experiences, but one goal in mind, and that is to make the most simplistic yet delicious mashed potato I can think of. That being said, let’s make this, shall we? What better person to have here for mashed potatoes than my own mom? The person that makes mashed potatoes better than anyone I know. It’s the one that she’s made year over year over year for my whole life. For Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for when do we really ever eat mashed potatoes outside? That’s like the only time, right? No, we have mashed potatoes all the time. We just celebrate mashed potatoes. We mashed potatoes are a celebratory thing like champagne. Pop the bottle or more specifically pop the skins off these. So you always do russetss. Always. My mom always used russetss. I have to use russetss. What do we do with them? Need to peel all the peeling off because your grandma didn’t like peeling on the potato. Okay. No peeling on the potato. Okay. So we’ll peel all of them off. This is a technique that we don’t always use in the family. We usually just do it right into the sink, right? But I like to do it on a sheet of parchment. You could also do it on like a baking sheet tray. Just something to catch your peels. That way you can just take that and then dump it in the trash. You know how I learned that? One time I saw Jenny peeling potatoes and I saw her just picking up all the peels out of the sink and then throwing it in the trash and then reaching the garbage disposal and pulling out more and putting in the trash. I was like, why are we doing this? Sometimes you got to be messy. So, we have 4 lbs of rust potatoes peeled. If you want, you can remove the eyes, but you know, it’s not like you have to. Okay, so we cut the potatoes. I always cut them in half first so they’re not so unruly. Then in half again long ways. Half again long ways. Then I turn everything this direction so that I can get about a 1 in cube. There’s some good knife skills there, Mom. Thank you. You want to try to have pretty uniform cubes so that they cook uniformly. And then you’ll just repeat this with all your potatoes till they’re all chopped. And then do these go straight in the in the boiling water? Boiling salted water. You don’t want it too salty because you want to flavor your potatoes when you’re mixing them. Then carefully add all your potatoes into the boiling water. And that’s boiling on mediumigh heat. You need to cook these for at least 20 minutes and test them with a potato tester or a fork for tenderness before you drain the water off. Does that timer start now or does it start once the water starts boiling? I start the timer now. 20 minutes on the clock. See you in a second. Let’s check these ters. What are you looking for when you prick these? You don’t want any resistance when you push your fork in. Or in this case, a chef’s tweezer. Oh, they’re ready. Nice and soft. All right, so these are done. Now, what will you drain it? Time to drain them. So, we have one of these preset. Metal sie, large sie, whatever you drain. Potatoes, pasta, spent grains for beer. This here, let me get you some ham protectors. A fish pot holders. Yeah, those things are up, too. We need some new ones. They’re like yellow on the outside and yellow on the inside. Not good. Ooh, these are yucky. Carefully take this to your sink where you have your colander. I love the use of the same pot. You’re keeping the residual heat in here, too, to keep this from, you know, getting too chilly while you’re cooking it up. Now, the fun starts. Yeah. So, I was about to heat this up and then she said that that’s not what she does. We have to do it the way I do it. So, we have 3/4 of a cup of half and half and one stick or half a cup or 112 g of unsalted butter. And at this point, I I do this. Do that. Get it in your head. Put in a stick of butter and mix the butter in with potatoes and get them started before you add your cream. So, you’re kind of almost a little bit emulsifying the butter in there. Yes. Oh, wow. Those broke up really easily. When do you add the salt? I add most of the salt now and then I taste test and add salt after. I start with about a teaspoon. The beauty of mashed potatoes, you can always add more. The only mistake that can be made when making mashed potatoes is to not taste it constantly. It’s the joy of making potatoes, tasting them constantly, and then not wanting to eat them by the time that they’re done because you’ve already eaten an entire one and a half servings of mashed potatoes and you’re like, I don’t even want these anymore. And then you serve and everyone’s like, oh, they’re so good. And you’re like, I guess I don’t really want any. I’ve been eating potatoes all actually get the away from me. I never say that. So, I always put a little bit of pepper into the mashed potatoes. I don’t put a lot cuz I don’t much care for pepper. You said black pepper is spicy to you, so I you know, it’s crazy you’re putting in there. It is, but I have to put a little bit in. It’s like rules. Now, you don’t want to over mix your potatoes. And if you really like lumpy potatoes, don’t mix them too much. Okay. I have 3/4 of a cup of half and half in here. I add a little at a time because you don’t know how wet your potatoes are when they came out of the water. And every potato is different, too. Some potatoes have less starch than others. Some have more water in them, more gray matter. Mix that up a little bit and then test it to see how wet they are. See, they’re already pretty wet. You didn’t even add all of it. As your potatoes set in the pan while you’re doing other things, they may thicken up. So, you may have to add more later or you can make them a little wet now to accommodate. I It’s It’s basically starch crystallization. So, after you make the potatoes, as they cool down and sit, not only going to thicken, but they’re also going to dry out a little bit. So, if you plan on having these sit, maybe make them a little bit more moist prior to letting them sit or serve them right away. Right. That’s basically what you’re saying. A little more salt. A lot more salt. Yes. A lot more salt. Potatoes can take a lot of salt. That’s the one thing people don’t know. Do remember though that you’re going to be putting gravy on them, so salt accordingly. I just like to blast people’s faces off. I season both to the absolute maximum. And if you put too much gravy on, that’s your problem. There’s never too much gravy. What do you think? Maybe a little more salt for you. Yes. For me, no. This is going to go right back to everybody in my comment section. It’s like, Josh wants salt on everything. If it doesn’t have too much salt, he doesn’t want it. I have a salt heavy palette. Okay, he does have a salt heavy palette and he’s usually correct. Wow. Backing me up. See, my mom’s here. You can’t talk about me. Can I add a touch more? Just a little bit. Just a tiny like like literally just like that much. That’s it. I’m telling you. I’m telling you. Mix it and try it again. I promise you. Okay. So, you didn’t use all the half and half. So, I guess it’s dependent on the potatoes. Keep that to the side until your potatoes are done and they’re about to get served cuz you might need to add more later, right? Yes. Okay. So, now set these aside. Keep these warm. And then we’re going to make mine very different than yours. So, these are a riff on Robishan potatoes. They’re in my cookbook. Links in the description for that if you want it. Little promo for you. I’m boiling these whole. These are small. Very important you use small Yukon gold potatoes. They’re a nightmare to peel for this recipe. This recipe is not the easiest in terms of simplicity, but they’re very good. 3 and 1/2 lb of small Yukon Gold potatoes are going to go in cold water, not salted. It doesn’t matter if it’s salted or not cuz we’re going to salt it later anyways, and the skins are going to kind of prevent the salt from penetrating. Anyhow, that’s set to mediumigh heat. Bring that up to a boil. And once that’s boiling, you’re then going to let that cook for about 25 to 30 minutes, give or take. It may take slightly less. So, I would actually check them at the 20-minute marker. Pull them out. Get a cake tester or a fork or a knife. Poke that through. If it goes in and comes out easily, them are done. Take those off the stove. Pour them into a sie. We’re just draining the water. We don’t need the water anymore. Now, here’s the one downside with my recipe. It is worth it. It is important for this recipe that you do it this way. We’re now going to peel the potatoes. What? He’s peeling them after he’s cooking them. I don’t stay calm. The peeling stage here is really important. You’re going to let them cool for a few minutes just so that the skins loosen a little bit. If you didn’t cook them enough, the skins will not come off. So, you got to get strike that fine balance. And by the way, they will be hot, so wear gloves. There’s really three ways to peel it. The easiest way is to find a potato. And you can see that the skin is already kind of wrinkles when you pull on it. And it should do that with just about any potato that you grab. That is basically insinuating that the peels are ready to quite literally peel themselves off. They’ll slide off. So, if I pinch and pull here, the whole skin just came right off. So, you pinch, pull, rotate it off, pinch, pull. Pinch, pull. That’s it. You just repeat that with all of your potatoes. Any peels that are annoying, you can always set this to the side and then do fine tuning work with a pairing knife just to remove any straggler peels. You cannot have peeling in this cuz it’ll it’ll basically ruin the look of the potato. And that’s it. This is what every potato should look like all the way around. Okay, you just rinse and repeat that with all of your potatoes. And then we move on to the next step. Now, there are two ways to handle these potatoes once they’re all cooked and peeled and all that, right? You can put them in a food mill and crank them, which is what I’m going to do, or you can put them through a potato ricer. Both of which will work. Potatoes go in. You could even kind of crush them up a little bit so that they fit in there a little better. And then you just run this food mill till they’re all passed through. So, I’m realizing that, Mom, your recipe is a lot easier than mine. This is a problem that I tend to have where my sole goal is to maximize with no consideration of anyone’s feelings. But if this makes them more wonderful. That’s very sweet of you. Okay, so we’re going to set our pan to medium heat. Get these sort of mixed and incorporated. Press them out. Right now, they’re very fluffy. You want to kind of integrate the potato. Our cold butter. This is one pound, one solid pound of cubed, unsalted butter. And you’re going to slowly add that butter, maybe about a handful at a time, and then stir that in. Again, this is at medium heat. What I want you to do is you’re going to continuously stir this and add that butter. And as it melts, once it’s fully melted and emulsified in the potato, you’re then going to add another handful. Then you’re going to rinse and repeat that until all of the butter has been added. That’s going to take a few minutes. It’s going to take like probably 5 to 10 minutes. So, first it’s going to start out dry and crumbly like this, but then as you add more butter, it’ll start to loosen up really nice. Okay, so our butter’s been added. It’s all melted. The potatoes are hot. At this point, I’m going to season it taste with salt very generously. Sort of stir that in. At this point, the potatoes are getting hotter, so we’re sort of increasing our speed just a touch. You don’t really want them to separate too much, but they will separate a little in this stage. It’s the milk you’re going to add that’s going to help bring it all together. Right now, they’re nice and warm. That’s a good sign. So, at this stage, I’ve got 1/4 cup or 60 ml of warm whole milk. I’m just going to add a splash of that. Just a little splash. And then, we’re going to mix that in. All right. Another splash. I’m going to mix that in. Turn the heat down. At this point, you could probably leave the heat off. Honestly, your potatoes are likely plenty hot. The rest of our milk. And at this stage, you can kind of start to play with it and figure out if it needs more or less milk. Because it has the butter mixed in there, it’s going to help kind of seize the potato a little. At this stage, I’m looking at the potato and I’m thinking, you know, it’s not quite as loose as I want it to be, especially for this. So, I’m going to add a touch more milk. I added another 1/4 cup of milk. It’s still needing it. This is going to depend on your potato. If you have a really high starch potato, you’re basically just going to keep adding milk about a tablespoon at a time until it comes together. And you’ll know you’re getting close when it sort of starts to hold its shape like this. This is the texture you’re looking for. You’ll see a lot of robot potatoes where they plate them and then they kind of dimple it around. It’s kind of the flex of being like, look how emulsified my potatoes are. The French love that. Now, for the classic mashed potato, this is how my mom serves it. Nice generous helping. Dimple the center for gravy or in this case, a nice powdered butter. Let that melt. A touch of fresh cracked black pepper. Now, you can plate the robash potato how you want. The way I do it is get a circular mound of potato. And then using a spatula, you’re going to gently dimple it all the way around the perimeter like so until you get this sort of shape that I’m mimicking that I saw once. Chop that with thinly sliced chives and a touch of fresh cracked black pepper. Serve immediately. I think we start this one and go this way. Okay. Cheers. Cheers. I have so much to say that I don’t even know what to say. Obviously a childhood memory. This is perfectly balanced in what it is. And by that I mean you still taste the potato in it. How many times you get mashed potatoes and you don’t really taste a potato. You just kind of taste like salt and oil or salt and butter. Even worse, you taste milk. Terrible. What I love about this is like you still get like the sweetness and the freshness from the potato. It’s seasoned really nicely, but it’s not too rich either. It has just enough creaminess and butteriness without being overwhelmingly so. What are your thoughts about it? It’s a classic mashed potato and it’s delicious and it doesn’t overpower the rest of your meal. That’s a really smart way to look at it. Really doesn’t. Now that said, let’s jump over here. So, we got this one. Totally different look. Also very good. Oh my goodness. That’s really good. This is delicious. It’s very good. It’s rich. It’s extremely buttery. It’s fragrant. The flavor is like in your face. But that said, it’s really not applicable to every situation. Like I wouldn’t want this served with, let’s say, a brace short rib or like a fatty piece of meat unless it was like a really small piece of steak and there was a small quinell of this on the side like served fine dining style, right? Cuz this is so strong. I feel like this is very situational. You can’t really eat this with everything, but it is insane. I mean, this is a potato that packs a punch. It’ll have you screaming. It’ll have you screaming, but it is a lot of work for potato. I mean, you saw how long it took for me to make this. This one whipped up in a few seconds. To me, this is the better one overall, pound-for-pound. If you want to smack in the face and like the most intense mashed potato eating experience, make this two beautiful mashed potatoes. You know what to do. Choose your own adventure. Pick whichever potato you want. But don’t forget, I love you so much. The link’s in the description for the recipe, by the way. Subscribe and I’ll see you next time. Thanks, Mom. Good job. Thanks, sweetie. [Music]