Ina Garten-Inspired Mashed Potatoes

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

The order the butter and the milk go in is not a matter of preference. It changes what happens to the starch.

Butter first coats the starch granules in fat, and coated granules cannot absorb the liquid that follows. Add the milk first and those granules swell, burst, and release free starch into the mash — which is what makes it stretchy, gluey and slightly translucent. Butter first, thoroughly worked in, then the warm milk, and the mash stays fluffy and separate.

It is the same reason you rub butter into flour before adding water in pastry, and almost no mashed potato recipe mentions it.

Floury potatoes, and dry them after draining

Maris Piper or King Edward — high starch, low moisture. Waxy potatoes hold their shape, which is desirable in a salad and disastrous in a mash. After draining, put them back into the dry hot pan for a minute so the surface water steams off. Water left behind either waters down the mash or gets absorbed and makes it heavy.

Never a food processor

Blades shear the potato cells open and release a huge quantity of free starch in seconds. The result is glue, and there is no recovering from it. A ricer gives the finest texture, a masher is perfectly good, a fork is acceptable. A machine is not.

Warm the dairy

Cold milk into hot potato drops the temperature, and cool mash is stiffer, so you add more liquid than you need and end up with something loose once it warms up again. It also makes the mash harder to work smooth.

Storing

Three days. Reheat over a low heat with a splash of milk, stirring gently, or in a covered dish at 160°C. It freezes better than you would think — the high butter content protects the texture.