It's Gonna be a Mashed Potatoes Weekend!

[amarie24]

I am so excited!! Mama agreed to help me make my 1st-ever batch of homemade mashed potatoes, firstly by buying me a potato masher (…not a pink one, tho, since it’ll be silicone and those apparently break), and some green onions to get me started this weekend.

Silver & Azurelunatic gave me plenty of advice & steps to further get me started!!

I’ve also been watching this video for a general idea…shit looks so yummy.

Imma learn to make yet another thing homemade! Yay!!!

Also, if anyone has any suggestions, tips, tricks, etc. that do not involve sour cream, share, share, share, please and thank you! :D


--Amarie


P.S ...Looking forward to this is helping me calm down from the worry of my job interview tomorrow, Friday morning. Imma...Imma be alright.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

ooo green onions in mashed potatoes sounds good

what I do:

* wash potatoes. do not peel; potato skin is tasty and most of the micronutrients in the potato are in the skin, so having bits of potato skin floating around the mashed potatoes is a good thing
* (I mean peel the potatoes if you don't like potato skin, but wash them first anyway)
* chop potatoes
* boil potatoes (…I haven't actually made mashed potatoes in a few years and I'm not sure for how long, but it's till sticking a fork in a chunk meets very little if any resistance)
* drain potatoes (saving at least some of the water they were cooked in if I'm planning on making potato bread—though I do not have that recipe anymore, unless it's in my one bread machine cookbook, which it might be, but it might also be in one or another of the others in that series that Mom has)
* add some butter (or margarine, but butter's better), some milk (or half-and-half, that being what's in this fridge), and whatever spicing one likes (usually salt, maybe pepper, maybe granulated garlic, but there's plenty room to play, and now I'm wondering about sauteing chopped onion and minced garlic to add at this stage)
* mash mash mash
* taste; adjust flavors and mash some more if desired (in my experience this usually means more dairy)
* nom nom nom

🍀 for the interview!

[amarie24]

OMFG, thank you so much, Alex!

A lot of your advice, particularly the beginning steps are just like the ones in the video I watched. Especially the wash, wash, wash first whether you like it skinless or not (we're gonna keep the skins in ours, since we don't mind & nutrients are important!), and the making sure that when you stick a fork in, it goes in pliantly.

I've never heard of...potato bread, my goodness. It was only a few years ago that I even heard of potato pancakes! And one of my friends over on Tumblr taught me to make sure I add lots of butter in case I ever wanted to make such pancakes. But now I'm hearing water makes...potato bread! Huh!

Margarine is better...gotcha! And I bet your average half-and-half would make the overall mash extra, extra, extra rich...(also, Silver told me ya'll need some milk for cereal! Hope you get it soon!!)

Thanks for all your advice-Imma keep this close to me when I make it this weekend. Also, thanks for the clover leaf of luck for my interview! ^ ^

[alexseanchai]

I cannot remember if there are actual potatoes in the recipe I have made for potato bread. But a bunch of flavor leeches out when boiling the potatoes (not enough as you'd notice eating the potatoes, though), so using that water instead of plain water in the bread recipe makes for mildly potato-flavored bread. (Bread machine + multiple bread machine recipe cookbooks + bored Alex = making a buncha bread machine breads, even the ones that sound weird. And making one that nobody, not my parents nor any of my siblings nor me, wanted to eat always took some doing.)

also no if you have butter you are willing to use for mashed potatoes then use the butter 😛🙂 (Mom's just pinch-penny and margarine's cheaper) and yeah, half and half is really gonna make for rich potatoes 😺

[amarie24]

Ahhh, so you just used the leftover water from boiling the potatoes to then flavor the bread you made? I gotcha!

Umm...I know both potatoes and bread are starches, but I don't...think my taste buds could...abide by the taste, but who knows!! But you are so innovative for making brand new bread from scratch like that-you really are!!

Butter it is, then! Also, you have siblings? How many? Are you the baby or the eldest? :D :D

[alexseanchai]

I mean if you don't want to try making potato bread then don't, more for me 😛

I'm the oldest of five, if we don't count the brothers-in-law. I've hardly met middle sister's husband, and they omitted the fancy ceremony because pandemic; oldest sister and her husband now have a seven-week-old baby. (And between Thea, middle sister's Cheese Wiz, and youngest sister's Pickles, my parents now have three grandkitties. 😸)

Also apparently I am baby-faced? I have at some point been mistaken for the twin sibling of every single one of them, but that is not as funny a story as: One of the high school theatrical productions that youngest sister stage managed, after the performance I attended, she introduced me to a couple of her friends. One of the friends asked how much younger I am than my sister is. …Negative ten years.

[amarie24]

Yes, friend, I happily leave all the potato bread to you! :P

And negative ten years...gosh, that person had to have felt some type of way that day, haha! Also, congratulations to all your siblings with their weddings, marriages, & babies. I know they're gonna rock life just like you rock life!!

[alexseanchai]

ha, the potato bread recipe is in the cookbook I have 😺 (plain mashed potato is also an ingredient, yes)

I wanna link you oldest sister's Instagram, since it's not locked and therefore those nibling photos are publicly visible, but it's got too much wallet-name stuff (even if she's leaving out all involved surnames) for me to feel comfortable linking those photos places without asking her first 🙁

[amarie24]

I just knew you had a cookbook like that! Knew it, knew it!! :D :D

[redsixwing]

Mashed potatoes, yummy! You're gonna have a treat. :D

My One Trick comes from my mom, who's spent more years in commercial kitchens than I have alive. This makes the potatoes extra fluffy.

Between draining and adding the mix-ins, put the pot back on the hot burner. Turn the heat off. Let it sit there for a couple of minutes. You don't want the potatoes to burn, but you do want there to be as little liquid in that pot as you can before you add the dairy.

Also, if you do sautee onion and garlic to add, you end up with garlic mashed potatoes. That's my favorite.

[amarie24]

Thanks so much-I can't wait!!

About your mom's trick: is it alright to stir the potatoes a bit while you're letting them sit on the burner? That way, you can see just how much liquid is left over? (I do this all the time with rice and pasta, bc sometimes it's hard to see thru and to the bottom of the pot where a lot of the liquid settles down.)

Yessssss, garlic mashed potatoes be freakin' lit!!

[alexseanchai]

This is not a trick I've ever used (I don't think I've made mashed potatoes on an electric stove ever, and it's point blank not a trick that will work on a gas stove, though turning the flame down to just shy of off might have the same effect), but I don't see why stirring the potatoes at this point would be a problem

[amarie24]

Alrighty, thank you, Alex! And yeah, all I have is an electric stove-I had a gas stove growing up in my childhood home. But nowadays it's all electric. :P

[pebblerocker]

I'm mashing potatoes tonight! Skins on, a little vegetable oil and soymilk, salt and pepper, and then I'm adding finely sliced raw onion and parsley and squashing it into a skillet to fry until brown on the bottom for a nice comforting potatoey food after a rough day.

Best of luck with your job interview <3 <3

[amarie24]

That's freakin' awesome! I kept the skins on mine, too, and...I never heard of mashed potatoes with both vegetable oil and even soy milk-wow!

This all sounds so delicious and I know it will be! Thanks for the wish of luck-it went pretty well! ^ ^