How to make easy homemade mashed potatoes without a recipe.
Good homemade mashed potatoes are something I think everyone should know how to make, because they’re such a reliable side dish. They’re a pretty universal crowd pleaser, and they pair so well with so many things. Serve them alongside chicken, under pot roast, or with creamed turkey . Almost anything tastes better with mashed potatoes on the side.
Plus, fresh, homemade mashed potatoes are SO easy to make there’s really no reason they ever need to come from a box.
A No-recipe Recipe
Today’s recipe isn’t really a recipe so much as a technique to learn so you never have to eat potatoes out of a box again (unless that’s your jam, in which case, enjoy). It’s completely customizable, and can be healthy (as healthy as you consider potatoes to be), or sinfully rich, vegan, or loaded with dairy.
This is the “recipe” I wish someone had handed me as a new cook, and I hope that after you follow it once, you never have to read a mashed potato recipe ever again.
Ingredient and Equipment Notes
- Potatoes: Russet potatoes, Yukon Golds, and red potatoes are all good options. Use what you have on hand or experiment and see which potato you prefer for your mashed potatoes.
- Milk or cream: You can use any (unflavored) milk or milk substitute or type of cream in your potatoes. The richer the dairy/dairy replacement you use, the richer your potatoes will be.
- Butter: Salted or unsalted butter will both work, as will margarine or non-dairy butter replacements.
- A tool for mashing: You can absolutely mash your potatoes with a fork, especially if you are making one or two-serving amounts, but eventually, I recommend investing in a potato masher like this one . They’re inexpensive, will make your cooking time go so much faster, and they’re also great for smashing bananas for banana muffins (mine definitely pulls double duty). If you like perfectly smooth and creamy potatoes, you can also use a potato ricer. It’s not my preferred texture, but maybe it’s yours. 😉
How to Make Mashed Potatoes
Since this is a non-recipe, there aren’t any measurements here. There’s no wrong way to make mashed potatoes, so just add a bit of butter, dairy, salt, and pepper, and taste. Add more if it doesn’t taste good, and keep going until it does. My mashed potato ratios change constantly depending on how rich I want them to be and yours probably will too.
Prep the potatoes: Peel and dice the potatoes. Place them in a pot and cover with cold water (starting with cold water will make sure your potatoes cook evenly all the way through and you don’t get soggy outsides.) Salt the water well with a teaspoon or two of salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Cook the potatoes: Boil the potatoes until they are tender (you should be able to easily smash a piece of one against the side of your pot with a fork), about 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from heat and drain potatoes.
Mash: Using a fork or potato masher, smash potatoes in the pot. Add butter or margarine and a splash of milk or cream. Mix and add salt and pepper. Taste and add more butter/milk/salt if needed.
Can I cut my potatoes ahead of time?
You sure can. You can store cut potatoes in cold water in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Can I freeze mashed potatoes?
Yes. You can freeze and reheat mashed potatoes. You can freeze single-serving portions individually or an entire pot of mashed potatoes. Store them in a freezer bag for up to 2 months. However, frozen mashed potatoes will never be quite as smooth and creamy as the were when freshly made. I usually prefer to make mine fresh.
What to serve with mashed potatoes?
Top your potatoes with Quick Gravy or Gravy from Drippings . My favorite mains to serve with mashed potatoes are:
- Tri-tip
- Roasted Chicken
- Country-style Pork Ribs
- Slow Cooker Beef Ribs
- BBQ Chicken Thighs
More Easy Sides
- Smashed Red Potatoes
- Parmesan Orzo
- Small Macaroni Salad
- Roasted Sweet Potatoes
- Microwave Baked Potatoes
Ingredients
- ▢ Potatoes peeled and diced
- ▢ Butter margerine, or non-dairy butter
- ▢ Milk cream, or dairy replacement of choice
- ▢ Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Place potatoes in a pot. Cover with cold water (starting with cold water will make sure your potatoes cook evenly all the way through and you don’t get soggy outsides) and salt water well with a teaspoon or two of salt. Bring to a boil.
- Boil until potatoes are tender enough that you can easily smash a piece of one against the side of your pot with a fork, about 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from heat and drain potatoes.
- Using a fork or potato masher, smash potatoes in the pot. Add butter or margarine and a splash of milk or cream. Mix and add salt and pepper. Taste and add more butter/milk/salt if needed.
Saturday Morning Snapshot
Made crepes for the first time today! They were somehow both more and less difficult than I had anticipated, but so good.
State of the Blog
How was everyone’s week? Mine was preeeeety great because I was gifted a kitchen torch and have spent every day since dreaming of all the delightful foods I can set alight with it. Do you have any handy kitchen gadgets you love? I haven’t been this excited about one since I got my first immersion blender.
On the blog, we continue to make our way through Nerd Month . If you don’t know what Nerd Month is, you can read about it in my ( Person of Interest ) Sencha Green Tea Doughnuts post . This week we had a recipe from American Gods , and then a mimosa and rib recipe combo for Wednesday and Friday from the dearly departed Happy Endings .
Fun story about that photo shoot, I shot those ribs and mimosas the same day as my Jello Shots with Triple Sec Whipped Cream , so my total consumption of food that day ended up being ribs, mimosas, and the boozed-up whipped cream from like five of those jello shots. It was delightful day. 😉
Next week, there’s an easy side dish, a classic breakfast recipe with added bacon, and then we’ll end Nerd month with a final boozy treat. I can’t wait for you to see it!
Recipes/posts released this week were:
Easy Beef Pasties – Buttery, flaky buttermilk pie crust wrapped around a savory mixture of steak, carrots, potatoes, and onions, seasoned with oregano and rosemary, and cooked in an easy homemade gravy. These hand pies one of my favorite recipes to ever come out of my kitchen!
Strawberry Mimosas – Strawberry Mimosas make brunch even better with a simple but beautiful upgrade to your classic mimosa recipe.
No-Fuss Easy Oven-Baked Ribs – The easiest oven-baked beef rib recipe you’ll ever find. All you need is two ingredients, one hour, and a whole lot of napkins.
Pop-culture Corner
It was TV Upfront week, when all the networks announce their fall schedules and release clips of their new shows. Did you watch any of the pilot trailers? Anything catch your fancy? I’m hoping there are some good ones in there to make up for last week’s cancellation bloodbath .
Ewan McGregor is joining Fargo for season 3 (!!), confirming my suspicion that no one in the world is better at their job than the Fargo casting director. So. Excited. Preacher premieres this weekend! Are you going to be watching? Early reviews have been great, and I really enjoyed the quick read through I did of the first volume of the comics a few weeks ago, so it’ll have my eyeballs.
Did you catch the new Star Trek Beyond trailer ? What did you think? My reactions went: 1)Ah, look at all the people I like in this cast. 2)Shohreh Aghdashloo has the best voice for voice overs–she and Ben Whishaw can just narrate my dreams, please 3)Was that just Idris Elba? WHY DOES HOLLYWOOD KEEP MAKING OUR MOST TALENTED ACTORS ACT THROUGH 10,000 LAYERS OF PROSTHETICS!!?? Guys, I’m just really bitter. Between this and Oscar Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse , there’s a lot of handsome and charisma going to waste.
Does anyone watch Bob’s Burgers ? They had a horse camp episode last week and as a formerly horse-crazy little girl (now horse-owning grown up lady) I have never related to anything as much as I did to Tina desperately wanting a magical relationship with a camp horse and completely failing to get it (seriously, I have never known a creature less likely to want to be your friend than a summer camp horse).
Fox via TheRabbitEars
Meal Planning
Saturday: Mom’s Sunday Beef Stew Sunday: Spaghetti Monday: Rosemary Chicken and Potatoes Tuesday: Light and Healthy BLT Salad Wednesday: Easy Homemade Panini Thursday: Zuppa Friday: Leftovers
Smokey bacon and tart apples make this Dutch Apple Baby pancake the perfect breakfast for a lazy weekend morning.
We’ve reached the penultimate recipe for Nerd Month ( more on Nerd Month here ) and we’re doing one for Bob’s Burgers !
Bob’s Burgers is a bit of an odd duck. I resisted the show for the longest time because animated comedies (with the exception of Archer ) have historically not been my thing. But I kept hearing good things, so I finally watched the show when it came to Netflix and found that all the critical praise was completely valid.
This is one of the funniest, sweetest family sitcoms on television.
It’s not crass or crude like you might expect from an adult animated comedy (not a bad thing, just not usually my comedy jam). It’s a show about a struggling middle-class family full weirdos who love each other. There are great burger puns and the characters are some of the most relatable you’ll find on television .
Ummm, maybe a little too relatable, as the other day I realized that oldest daughter Tina’s frequent moan of distress is one I’ve made over things on this very blog many times…
Anyway, during their season four Christmas episode, the family takes a trip to a diner where everyone is just crazy over the diner’s Dutch Babies.
Fox via Tumblr
I had never even heard of the things before, so I was instantly intrigued. Fast forward to today, and I present to you a BACON Dutch Apple Baby.
Oh yeah. This baby got an bacon upgrade.
I’m so sorry for that pun.
(I’m not really that sorry.)
This recipe is for you heroes who insist on dipping your bacon in syrup to the disgust of everyone around you at the breakfast table. I’m one of you, I love you, and I think you are really going to like this recipe.
It’s a traditional Dutch Apple Baby with its classic custard base and tart apple filling made even better by replacing the butter in the recipe with bacon drippings and adding chopped bacon over the apples before pouring in the batter.
As you get that dramatic Dutch Baby puffing up of the pancake, the apples and especially the bacon rise with it, forming a slightly crisp top layer, so you end up with a breakfast dish that is savory and sweet and smokey, with tart apples and salty bacon in every bite.
It’s one of those recipes that you take a bite of it and go, Hmmm. That’s good. Then you take another and another and another and before you know it, it’s completely gone and you’re crying because you never want to eat anything but Bacon Dutch Apple Babies for the rest of your life.
Oh, and if that all sounds disgusting to you, you can totally just use butter, omit the bacon pieces, and eat your bacon on the side. It’s still delicious, and we can still be buddies (just not bacon buddies). 😉
This dish makes two really filling servings for big eaters, or three to four smaller servings.
Ingredients
Bacon & Cinnamon Apples
- ▢ 4 slices bacon
- ▢ 1 large Granny Smith apple
- ▢ 2 tablespoons ( 25 g) granulated sugar divided
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- ▢ Butter*
- ▢ 3 tablespoons ( 38 g) brown sugar
Pancake Batter
- ▢ 1/4 cup and 3 tablespoons ( 53 g) all-purpose flour
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
- ▢ 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
- ▢ 1/2 cup milk whole or 2%
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ▢ 2 large eggs
Instructions
Cook Bacon
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Cook bacon (using your preferred method) until crisp. Transfer bacon to a paper towel-covered plate and reserve the grease.
Prepare the Apples
- Peel apple and cut it into 1/4-inch thick slices and cut the slices into thirds. Set aside.
- Combine 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar, the cinnamon, and ginger in a small bowl and set aside.
- Pour 3 tablespoons of the reserved bacon grease into an 6x6-inch baking dish. All bacon is different, so if your bacon didn’t render enough grease, you can make up the difference with melted butter. Sprinkle brown sugar over the top and add apple slices, spreading them evenly over the brown sugar.
- Sprinkle granulated sugar mixture over the apples and place dish in the oven until apples are slightly cooked and mixture is bubbly at the edges, about 8 to 10 minutes.
Prepare the Batter
- While your apples cook, make the batter.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, the remaining tablespoon of sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Slowly whisk in the milk, stirring constantly to prevent lumps from forming.
- Add vanilla and eggs one at a time, beating well after each. After the final egg, beat for 2 minutes, until mixture is foamy and allow to rest for 5 minutes.
- Chop bacon into 1/2-inch pieces.
- Once apples are done, sprinkle bacon over the top and then pour in pancake batter and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pancake has puffed up considerably and is golden and set in the center.
- The pancake will begin to deflate almost as soon as it comes out of the oven. This is completely normal. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or drizzle with a little maple syrup if desired and serve.
Notes
Nutritional Information Recipe Adapted From: TheKitchn
No-recipe Homemade Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients
- Potatoes peeled and diced
- Butter margerine, or non-dairy butter
- Milk cream, or dairy replacement of choice
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Place potatoes in a pot. Cover with cold water (starting with cold water will make sure your potatoes cook evenly all the way through and you don’t get soggy outsides) and salt water well with a teaspoon or two of salt. Bring to a boil.
- Boil until potatoes are tender enough that you can easily smash a piece of one against the side of your pot with a fork, about 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from heat and drain potatoes.
- Using a fork or potato masher, smash potatoes in the pot. Add butter or margarine and a splash of milk or cream. Mix and add salt and pepper. Taste and add more butter/milk/salt if needed.
