Adapted from Garden & Gun.
Mashed potatoes are the unsung star of the Thanksgiving spread—a perfect comfort food that’s rich and salty and creamy, and the perfect vessel for a ladle-full of gravy. And yet making them is often an afterthought (that pesky bird is so high maintenance!). To give this year’s taters the love they deserve, follow these tips for a fluffy and flavorful result that’ll be the talk of the table.
Chop into 1″ pieces.
Plunking potatoes into boiling water causes them to become waterlogged, so stick with putting them in cold water and bringing to a simmer. “Potatoes, after they are peeled and cut, need to go into a pot of generously salted cold water and slowly brought up to simmer,” Boden says. “If you start with cold water, the potato cooks evenly. If you put them into hot water, the outside will overcook and get waterlogged before the center is cooked, leading to poor-textured mashed potatoes.” They’re done when they are just soft enough to be crushed by the tines of a fork.
Start with cold butter, Boden says. “I’ll add my cold butter first and start mashing with grandma’s potato masher, then add salt and loads of black pepper.” Cold butter that melts slowly will distribute the fat more evenly. A ricer is also not a bad idea, as powering through them with the Kitchen Aid will make a gooey potato.
And salted butter is best, according to McDaniel. “Cut butter into small cubes and keep cold,” he says. “This is one of the few times I would use salted butter, but it’s important here for seasoning the potatoes. Once the desired amount of butter has been added, I season with white pepper and taste for salinity, butter, and pepper.” If you’re happy with the saltiness but want more butter, add unsalted butter at this point. But if you want more salt and butter flavor, go with more salted butter. And importantly, if you just need more salt, dissolve it in warm milk first so you don’t have the crystals in your potatoes.
Once you have that buttery base, it’s time to add cream, which should be warm (no one likes chilled mashed potatoes). “Add more cream than you think you should because after the potatoes sit for a second, the starch will set, and the potatoes will be firm again and not creamy,” Boden says.
Another approach is to heat the cream and butter together and then pour into the potatoes as you mash. The advantage to this technique is that you can infuse a little bonus flavor. “I like to add a mixture of heavy cream, butter, and garlic, and then add that to my potatoes,” says Jordan Arcuri, executive chef at Oak Steakhouse in Nashville, Tennessee. “It makes them creamy and smooth, and adding confit garlic to your cream-butter mixture makes it super tasty.” (See recipe).
Now for the gravy…