I Cooked My Way Through Our Most Popular Mashed Potatoes
Each had a lesson to teach.
Mashed potatoes are almost alchemical. By manipulating just a handful of ingredients—mostly potatoes, some sort of liquid dairy and butter—you can utterly transform them in a myriad of ways. They can be creamy, rich and silky or light and downright fluffy, to say nothing of the flavorings and inclusions.
Our four most popular mashed potato recipes span the entire spectrum, from milk-simmered to butter-braised, with smart strategies for incorporating garlic, cheese and herbs.
Naturally, I had to make all four, and I’m glad I did. Each one had a lesson to teach.
For the creamiest mashed potatoes, simmer them in milk
Most mashed potato recipes start with a big pot of salted water, but our Milk-Simmered Mashed Potatoes take a different route. Instead of water, we simmer Yukons in whole milk. The starch combines with the liquid dairy as it reduces, thickening the mash and rendering it creamy without any cream. And, since there’s no need for draining, you get a pronounced potato flavor, heightened with a few tablespoons of butter.
Make them if you love: a velvety bowl of creamy luxury.
Be sure to cook this mash in a heavy-bottomed pot. Milk is prone to scorching, even over low heat, and thinner materials increase that risk. (I made this mistake once, and my mash had a distinct smoky note.) And be sure to use dense, already creamy Yukons. They contain the perfect amount of starch.
For the fluffiest mashed potatoes, braised them in butter
These potatoes are absolutely loaded with butter—18 tablespoons of it. (You can’t get any braising done with half a stick.) Other than butter, all you need is a few pounds of russets, salt and pepper, and just enough water to cover the cubed spuds in a Dutch oven. There’s no cream or milk. Instead, the potatoes simmer in a minimal amount of water that is cooked down to a starchy slurry instead of being washed down the drain, so all the potato flavor stays in the pot.
The butter—all of the butter—is added at the same time as the water. As the fat melts, it coats the potatoes’ starch molecules and prevents them from becoming gluey, which keeps them fluffy and safeguards against overmashing. Unsurprisingly, they’re decadent and buttery; shockingly, they’re not the least bit greasy.
We tested numerous potato varieties, but russets were our favorite. They do require a rinse before cooking to wash away excess starch, but they turn out reliably fluffy every time. (And they reheat like a dream.)
Make them if you love: a classic, platonically ideal bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes.
Don’t use a small pot, nor a tall, narrow stockpot for this recipe. A Dutch oven with about a 7- to 8-quart capacity is best, as it provides enough surface area for the quantity of potatoes and allows for the correct rate of evaporation of moisture.
Infuse dairy with herbs for the best flavor
Besides a finishing flurry of chives, mashed potatoes should be free of little herby bits and leaves. Chopping herbs and mashing them with cooked spuds spoils the texture of an otherwise smooth mash, and it’s a waste of time. Most of the highly desired flavor compounds found in herbs—particularly woody ones like rosemary and thyme—are fat soluble.
Swirling the herbs in nutty browned butter, like we do in this recipe, extracts all of those delicious molecules so they can be distributed throughout the mash, without annoying little bits. Half gets mashed directly into the cooked potatoes, half is drizzle on top before serving. Warm half & half brings a lighter creaminess than heavy cream.
Make them if you love: herbs, particularly sage, rosemary and thyme.
Keep those potatoes hot! Don’t forget to heat the half-and-half so it doesn’t lower the temperature of the potatoes when added. Mashing the potatoes directly in the pot in which they were simmered, instead of in a bowl, also helps with heat retention.
For something special, look to Türkiye
Patates Paçasi (Turkish Mashed Potatoes with Garlic, Yogurt and Cheese) are a special occasion mash. Like our Butter-Braised Mashed Potatoes, the russets are cooked in a minimal amount of water until no moisture remains, to keep the potato flavor in the pot. Unlike our other mashes, this one is twice-cooked.
Once the potatoes are fall-apart tender, they’re mashed with a cup of whole-milk yogurt, a little half & half and a few tablespoons of butter. Olive oil, eggs (to keep everything emulsified), salt and pepper follow, but the really special ingredient is four cloves of grated garlic. The microplane breaks the allium down into the tiniest pieces, extracting tons of flavor that’s easily distributed throughout the mash. It’s rich and savory, with a layer of browned, bubbling cheese and a drizzle of fruity Aleppo pepper-infused butter to bring a gentle, welcome heat.
Make them if you love: a cheesy, casserole-like mashed potato that feels holiday-worthy.
For make-ahead convenience, the mashed potatoes can be put into the baking dish without the cheese topping, cooled, covered with foil and refrigerated a day in advance. When ready to bake, scatter the cheese onto the potatoes, re-cover with foil and bake as directed.
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Claire Lower
Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.
