Mashed Potatoes - Brenda Gantt (2024)

FAQs

What does Rachael Ray use to mash potatoes? ›

Mash potatoes with half-and-half or milk using a potato masher. Add in the cream cheese and smash until the cheese melts into the potatoes. Add chives or scallions. Season with salt and pepper, to your taste.

Gordon Ramsay's mashed potatoes are known for their richness and flavor. He typically adds butter, heavy cream, and sometimes crème fraîche to his mashed potatoes for a creamy and indulgent texture. Additionally, he often incorporates roasted garlic or chives for extra flavor.

"Potatoes are about 80% water, so you want to let that steam get away," Harvey said. The very best mashed potatoes start with a ricer, a relatively inexpensive piece of kitchen equipment that forces your cooked food through tiny holes.

Cook the potatoes in salted boiling water for about 15 minutes until they're tender, then drain. Pass through a ricer and return to the pot. Add more butter, heavy cream, the garlic béchamel sauce, fresh parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir everything together and continue cooking for about 2 minutes.

As you all know, baking powder is a leavener, and that will help our creation – the baking powder reacts with the heat of the potatoes and the acid in the milk to create small air bubbles in the mash. And that's how you make the fluffiest mashed potatoes ever.

Soupy, watery mashed potatoes usually happen because the cooked potatoes were cut into pieces that were too small, weren't drained well enough, or were overcooked.

Adding egg yolks to a pot of mashed potatoes is an easy, dairy-free texture and taste upgrade that doesn't require any special techniques. The yolks harbor all the flavorful fats and emulsifying components and will thus effectively unify the fat and water in potatoes, translating to a smoother, uniformly creamy pot.

Ingredients. Potatoes, Dairy Blend (Milk, Butter [Cream, Salt], Soybean Oil, Salt, Natural Flavor, Monoglycerides), Potassium Sorbate (to Maintain Freshness), Black Pepper, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (to Maintain Color).

Restaurants prepare the potatoes ahead by boiling and mashing just the potato, then just before serving, it is mixed into boiling cream (or milk or even broth or a combination thereof) to reheat it and make it nice and creamy.

Use a hand masher for chunkier, more textural potatoes that are still light and creamy. Use a stand mixer or electric hand mixer for densely creamy potatoes, the heavy kind you have to use your fork as forklift to transport from plate to mouth.

What 4 types of potatoes are best for making mashed potatoes? ›

The best potatoes for mashed potatoes are a starchy varieties like russet, Idaho or Yukon gold. Starchy potatoes are best for mashed potatoes because they have a fluffy, almost airy texture that breaks down easily.

Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes. Cold water is used because hot water would react with the starch activating it, making it harder to separate from the potatoes.

Using a piping bag with a large star point, pipe the potatoes onto a cookie sheet. Alternatively, you can just fill a casserole dish with the mashed potatoes, and use a fork to create lots of peaks on the surface.

Cooking your potatoes in very generously salted water—about a tablespoon of water per pound of potatoes—means the potatoes will be seasoned all the way through. Once mashed, they'll need a lot less salt on the back end.

A potato ricer is widely regarded as the best tool for mashed potatoes that are smooth and fluffy.

What are the best potatoes for mashed potatoes? I think Yukon Golds and russets are the best potatoes for mashing. Yukon Gold potatoes are thin-skinned yellow potatoes. I love to mash them because they have a creamy texture, rich golden color, and buttery flavor.

A masher is a fixed, manual-style tool that uses arm strength and a rigid, flat, (usually) wire or perforated design to mash food. A ricer forces food through a sheet of small holes. For recipes that require ultra-smooth potatoes, such as gnocchi, a ricer is essential.

A potato masher, tater masher, bean masher, pea masher, masher, or crusher is a food preparation utensil used to crush soft food for such dishes as mashed potatoes, apple sauce, or refried beans.