The BEST Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Fluffy, creamy Mashed Potatoes come together with a few simple ingredients and very little time. They are the perfect rich, buttery side dish and are so versatile. Learn how to make these ahead of time, easily reheat them, or freeze them for holiday meal prep! If you’ve ever experienced mealy or watery mashed potatoes, rest assured that this easy recipe is foolproof to avoid those less-than-pleasant experiences! With my simple tips, they turn out creamy, velvety, and flavorful every time.

RECIPE: https://preppykitchen.com/mashed-potatoes/

ORDER MY NEW BOOK!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1668026821
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/preppy-kitchen-super-easy-john-kanell/1144426212?ean=9781668026823
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/preppy-kitchen-super-easy-more-than-100-simple-and-versatile-recipes-john-kanell/20713006?ean=9781668026823
Booksamillion: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/9781668026823
Amazon CA: https://a.co/d/fuve5Xj

Hey, I’m John Canel and today on Preppy Kitchen, we’re making some creamy, amazing mashed potatoes. So, let’s get started. First off, grab four pounds of potatoes. You have a choice here. You could use Yukon Gold or Russet potatoes. Those are the most popular. Yukon Gold gives you a creamy, amazing mashed potato. Russet will give you a fluffy, lighter mashed potatoes. So, it’s really up to you. A lot of people do 50/50, some russet, some Yukon gold. Today I’m doing all Yukon. If you’re using Yukon Gold, peeling is optional. You can have the skin in for some more texture, but that’s a texture that is not desired or accepted by any other member of the household. So, I’ll be peeling them today. Mashed potatoes might just be the perfect side dish. It goes with basically everything. If I’m having a lot of people over for a holiday or even just as a big dinner party, I’ll oftentimes make the mashed potatoes up to two days in advance. Just have it hanging out in the fridge in the serving dish and then I pop it into the oven to bake once people are coming over. The added bonus of doing that is you get a nice kind of like golden almost crisp top. Once your potatoes are peeled or not, we’re going to cut these into 1in chunks. You don’t want to wait all day for your giant potato pieces to cook through. So 1 in little cubes is just the right size. By the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. There’s two new recipes every single week. Mashed potatoes is such a simple recipe. You might be wondering, why are you even bothering to make a video for it? Well, there’s a couple of things that can go wrong. You could end up with gummy mashed potatoes, watery mashed potatoes, under seasoned mashed potatoes. The list goes on. So, I wanted to show you how to make them properly with a few hints and tips. That way, they will always be a beautiful, buttery, creamy star of your table. Potatoes are not native to Europe. So when they were introduced and people are like, hm, weird little things that grow in the dirt sounds horrible. Chefs had to make kind of like super fancy potato dishes to convince everybody, starting with the nobles, that these were actually delicious and a great ingredient. So this beautiful silky buttery puree was one of those ways to convince people, you know what, potatoes are delicious. Took a while, but eventually people had a change of heart and potatoes became popular the world around. This recipe makes a pretty big batch of mashed potatoes. If you have leftovers, yes, you could enjoy them throughout the week. But you could also repurpose them to make other things like Duchess potatoes. I think I have a video for that. I’ll link it up here. But really delicious. Ooh, or shephardd’s pie. That’s also good. Let me know in the comments if you have some delicious leftover ideas. My potatoes are all prepped, so it’s time to pop these into a big pot. In my mind, potatoes that are mashed need to have garlic. So, grab at least four cloves of garlic, give them a peel, and just add them right in there. They’re going to boil, release a lot of flavor, and they’ll get mashed towards the end of this recipe. You want your mashed potatoes to have some good salty flavor throughout. So, we’re going to boil them with water and a tablespoon of salt. Okay, it’s time to fill this pot up so that the potatoes are covered with 1 in of cold water. We’re using cold water and not dumping the potatoes into boiling water because you want them to cook evenly. If the water was really hot, the outside of the potato would cook first, then overcook by the time the inside was fork tender. Okay, we’re going to pop our potatoes onto high heat and bring them to a boil. Now, [Music] once your potatoes come to a boil, we’re going to boil them for about 10 minutes, then check with a fork to see if they’re fork tender. In the meantime, make sure you have a colander at the ready in your sink because we will be draining these. While your potatoes are boiling away, we’re going to combine 3/4 of a cup of whole milk or heavy cream or half and half. It’s up to you. How rich do you want your potatoes to be? And half a cup of butter right into a small pot. We’re going to heat this up over medium heat, stirring occasionally for 3 to four minutes, just so it’s melty and warm. You do not want to add ice cold milk or cream to your potatoes. It’s been 10 minutes of boiling, so let’s check the potatoes. Grab a fork and a piece. You should be able to break into it. And it’s tender. It falls apart. That’s fork tender. These are ready to go. If your potatoes are holding or you can feel it’s hard to push in with the fork, give them an extra minute or two. We need to get all the water out of these potatoes. So, start by draining them into a colander. But we’re not done there. Once drained, we’re going to transfer these back into the pot. My potatoes and garlic are going to go back onto the heat, but this time low. The only liquid I want in my potatoes is melted butter and milk or cream. So, we want to get rid of any last remaining bits of water. Cook your potatoes over low heat for a minute or two while stirring gently occasionally. This will just help any remaining liquid steam away, and your potatoes will be pure creamy flavor. Once that excess liquid’s removed, it’s time to mash our potatoes to your desired consistency. This is one of the steps where things can go wrong for your mashed potatoes. If you used an electric hand mixer, for example, or a food processor to really whip these potatoes up, they would become gummy. You’re going to overwork the starch there. So, we want to mash them as little as possible while still getting that nice consistency we want. It’s also important to mash these while they’re still hot so you avoid that same gummy issue from overworking the potatoes. I like having a little bit of texture here, so I’ll be keeping some lumps. And this is definitely time to break out your potato masher. If you don’t have one, a big fork will do. [Music] I’m loving my potato facial. So steamy. My potatoes are nicely mashed up. My face is nice and dewy. So, it’s time to combine the potatoes and that creamy butter mixture. Pour the hot milk mixture right over your potatoes. This smells so good already. Now, it’s time to gently mix. I’m using a wooden spoon. You could use a spatula if preferred. here. You want to avoid overworking the potatoes, especially if you used Yukon Gold like I did. The thing is that rusted potatoes are much more forgiving for overmixing, but they’re fluffy and I don’t love the texture of them. Yukon Gold is so creamy and rich, but you can’t overm mix them or they get gummy. Our potatoes are on their way to being finished, but how do they taste? Wouldn’t it be nice to know? Grab a spoon and we’re going to taste just to see if they need more salt or something is missing. That’s great. I’m going to add an extra pinch of salt though, just to amp up the flavor a little bit. You have so many mixins you could add in right now. I love having well an extra 1/4 cup of butter. To be honest, I I’ll plate this up into a serving bowl, make some nice troughs, and then have that filled with melted butter. M. So good. You could also add in half a cup of a strong grated cheese like a parm or ramano or 3/4 of a cup of any of your favorite cheeses. You could also use cream cheese, boran. So many different flavors to add in. And of course, a nice scattering of herbs like chives would be beautiful on this as well. I’m also adding some black pepper to taste. Totally up to you. And if you want that hit of heat, but you don’t want to see the black specks, use some white pepper instead. Grabbed a handful of chives from my garden. And I’m just going to give these a nice fine chop. A nice liberal sprinkle on top. A little butter to finish the job. And just like that, your mashed potatoes are ready to enjoy. Packed with flavor, perfectly creamy, and so incredibly satisfying. I hope you get a chance to make this easy side dish. And if you like my recipes, hit that subscribe button and check out my side dish