5 Tips For The Best Mashed Potatoes | Healthy Kitchen Hacks

The best cooking tips to make the ultimate bowl of mashed potatoes!

It’s Healthy Kitchen Hacks Wednesday – the day we share our favorite time-saving kitchen tricks and cooking shortcuts to help you make healthy and delicious meals.

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Now…onto today’s featured Healthy Kitchen Hack:

5 Hacks For the Best Mashed Potatoes(video):

I realized I may be opening a can of worms here as peeps are passionate about their mashed potatoes. Lumpy or smooth, skins or peeled, milk or cream, the list goes on. So, rather than saying I have the best recipe, I figured I share some of the most reliable tips to help you whip up the best batch of mashed potatoes!

Go For The Gold (or Russett) – Hands down, the best mashed potatoes are made with potatoes that have a higher starch content like Yukon Golds or Russetts. These tend to fall apart when they are cook which make for fluffier, lighter mash.

Leave ‘Em Be – No need to peel or chop up your potatoes before boiling them. You don’t want your cooked potatoes to retain any water so cooking them whole with their peels helps to keep more of that water out.

And if you don’t like peels in your mashed potatoes, you can easily peel them after they’re cooked. Bonus: the skins slip off easily. (Extra Healthy Kitchen Hack: Save the skins and make potato skin pancakes in your waffle maker.)

Start Cold – Put your taters in your pot and fill with COLD water (to about an inch above the potatoes) and then bring to a low, rolling boil. This way, the insides of the potatoes have more time to heat up vs. just being plopped into boiling water.

Drain and Heat – Once your potatoes are fork tender, drain the water and add them back to the pot. Cook for a few more minutes to vaporize any remaining water.

Cut Calories Not Flavor – This is my favorite hack I’ve used for decades. Instead of mixing in cream and butter, use buttermilk! You’ll slash calories while still achieving that creamy and riched mashed potato flavor. Another tip I learned from A Mind “Full” Mom (who just did an awesome Facebook Live on her Mashed Potato tips) is to use evaporated milk.

Whatever you use, be sure to warm the buttermilk, milk, etc. slightly as using cold liquid can result in glue-y mashed potatoes (yuck.)

I don’t mind lumps so I usually use a potato masher to mix in the buttermilk and then sometimes end with quick mix with my hand mixer. If you like your mashed potatoes smooth, use a food mill or a potato ricer —> I have this OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Adjustable Potato Ricer (affiliate link.)

Do you use any of these hacks? How do you like your mashed potatoes?