Creamiest Mashed Potato EVER!!

I’ve ALWAYS struggled to make mashed potatoes. Until now…

Years ago, my hubby was repacking the kitchen (just before we moved in together) and unbeknownst to him, he threw away the only potato masher we had.

For the next few years if ever I did make mashed potatoes, I used to cut the potatoes really finely before finishing it off with a fork after boiling it to mush. Needless to say, this was not ideal. It was gloopy and gluey, not even talking about heavy!

The day I actually remembered to buy a potato masher was a really good day for me – I felt empowered. That was until I actually used it and my mash turned out not only gloopy and gluey again, but now also lumpy at the same time. I tried adding butter, milk, cream and even baking powder to make it fluffier, but no matter what I tried it never seemed to be as good as other people’s mashed potatoes. To tell you the truth, I even attended a live cooking demo with Michel Roux Jr at the Ideal Home Show years ago. We could text questions for him to answer and I asked exactly that: “how do you make mashed potatoes creamy and not gloopy?”. Chef Michel gave some great advice, but unfortunately creamy mashed potato seemed to be my Everest.

Then I saw on a Facebook Group someone mentioning that they make their mashed potato in an Instant Pot. And the cogs in my brain started ticking with this little idea as I, too, am a very privileged and proud owner of an Instant Pot. This nifty little gadget has totally revolutionised the way I cook as it can pretty much do everything apart from frying (but Instant Pot fixed that little problem also recently!).

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I had a few potatoes that needed cooking and I thought that a bit of experimenting wouldn’t hurt. I chopped them up (ok, just quartered since I felt lazy), peeled some garlic cloves and put it all into the Instant pot. I covered the potatoes with water and pressure cooked it for 10 minutes until it was soft (not mushy).

Once it was cooked through, I had the brilliant brainwave of placing the potatoes and garlic, along with one ladleful of cooking water in my KitchenAid stand mixer. I first used the flat beater on a very low speed to break the potatoes up before adding seasonings. I then changed the flat beater for a whisk. I whisked the whole lot at a high speed for 2 minutes until light and airy and delicious.

This was truly the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever made!

Some tips

• A little word of advice: due to the whipping, the potatoes cools very quickly. Either serve with a hot onion gravy or reheat before serving.
• Although the recipe calls for cheese and yogurt, you can very easily leave this out to make it dairy free.
• Alternatively, you can add a tonne of other flavours like coriander, different flavoured cheeses, chopped bacon (cooked through), smoked paprika or just black pepper to add variety. I sometimes mix in some sautéed onions to ramp up the flavour.
• Instead of water use chicken or vegetable stock (broth) for a deeper flavour.

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This made the best bangers and mash ever! Onion gravy is only fried onions, garlic and gravy granules (oh, and a glug of red wine…)

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Hungry for more potato recipes?