Mashed potato has to be up there with some of the best comfort food.
Add a bit of grated cheese and a blob of mustard – maybe a portion of beans too -and you have yourself a meal that’s as satisfying as it’s easy to prepare.
Because, most people would agree, mashed potato is undeniably simple to make.
Yet, we’ve not been making it correctly, committing one crucial mistake in our preparation.
So what is it we’ve been doing wrong?
The method the majority of us practise is to boil the potatoes , drain them and then add butter/milk/cheese before mashing it all together.
Not only does this do the dish a disservice, but what’s worse is it also means we’ve been eating tasteless mashed potato all this time without even realising.
Food Network chef Tyler Florence spoke to Popsugar on the matter:
“Potatoes have a really delicate, beautiful minerality to their flavour profile, and when you cook potatoes in water and you pour that water down the drain, you’ve extracted all the flavour of the potato.”
So it’s that first step which is where we’re going wrong.
Instead of boiling our spuds in water, Tyler advises cooking them IN the cream, milk and butter.
Simply pop the chopped raw potatoes in a pot with all the dairy goodness you’d be adding later and let them all cook together, soaking up all those flavours.
Tyler adds: “When the potatoes are tender, I put a colander inside (a) bowl. I pour the potatoes through the colander, and the cream will collect on the bottom.
“Then I’ll put the potatoes back into the pot and take the potato-infused garlic cream and fold that back into the potatoes, and it’s the most incredible flavour profile.”
