Mashed Potatoes | Basics with Babish

- Hello friends, today we are going to learn how to make

mashed

potatoes

using only these strange rocks, thanks to the sponsorship of Hidden Valley Ranch. Like most people, I love the ranch. With the Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning mixer, you can add flavor to urban spice blends and all kinds of dishes to make them taste delicious. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is a loaded

mashed

potato. Let's get down to the

basics

. (upbeat music) To make mashed

potatoes

, as you may have guessed, we're going to need some potatoes. First, we will talk about the types of potatoes, followed by mashing techniques and the necessary mixtures.

So, let's take a look at the types of potatoes you're most likely to find at your local supermarket. First, the confusingly named Red Bliss potato. Although it's typically relegated to roasting, its waxy interior, creamy texture, and thin skin make it ideal for rustic mashed potatoes. I think even more ideal for this application are fingerling potatoes, by virtue of their high skin-to-flesh ratio. That sounded weird. Next up, grown here in the good old United States of America, the pride of Idaho, the one and only Solanum tuberosum, also known as the large, fluffy, starchy russet Burbank potato. Its high starch content means that we have to be careful about mixing too much, otherwise we will end up with wallpaper paste.

Lastly, perhaps the best all-purpose potato, the Yukon Gold. Like Red Bliss potatoes, they have a lower starch content than russets, but are less waxy, so they make a lighter, fluffier, creamier mashed potato. There you have it, your standard supermarket tubers. Enough talking about potatoes, let's talk about how we can mash them better. Let's start with the lightest, fluffiest russet, but also potentially the most delicate, the high-starch russet, which you'll notice I'm peeling and slicing one at a time. This is because the high starch content of this potato will begin to oxidize and brown quite quickly. Then, immediately after cutting them, they are placed in a previously watered cooking container, which we are going to salt and bring to a simmer.

Starting the potatoes in cold water helps them heat and cook more evenly, preventing lumps from forming in the future. Once simmering, cook the potatoes for 15 to 20 minutes, until inserting a paring knife into a piece of potato and twisting it effortlessly splits the cube in half. Then we just have to drain these guys in the sink over there, and then in most cases our mashing tool of choice is not a masher at all, but rather a potato juicer, which is like a gigantic garlic crusher Why use a potato masher? Well, two big reasons. First, mash potatoes evenly and without lumps.

Secondly, and especially important with russets, it mashes potatoes less traumatically, breaks down fewer starch cells and keeps the potatoes light and fluffy, not sticky and stringy, as is often the case with mashed potatoes with work overload. Now we are going to move away from the russet and get closer to the rustic with some crushed fry, which like any potato, we cut into one-inch pieces of the same size. Uniformly sized potatoes ensure even cooking and are another weapon in the war against lumps. The same as before, we bring it to a boil in a little cold water with a lot of salt.

Once boiling, cook for 15 to 20 minutes until completely tender before draining, and since we are making rustic mashed potatoes, this is the only case where I can recommend using a potato masher. Not only can low-starch fingerlings withstand the fury of the masher, but the rustic texture with all skin and everything will cover up the clumps. But what about the whipped potatoes, Andy? Well, voice in my head, beating potatoes in almost any case means intentionally overworking the starch. So if you're going to do it, make sure you use the lowest starch potato, the Yukon gold, which as you can see, I won't even immediately submerge it in cold water, because its starch content is so low that it will discolor very slowly.

Once cut into pieces of one centimeter of the same size, we cover them with cold water, salting them generously until the water is like the ocean or tears. Cook for 15 minutes or until completely tender, drain and then if you want to get the flavor of the whipped potatoes, I recommend you keep putting them in rice and then just load them up with the topic of our next chapter on mashed potato knowledge, he mixes. Once our potatoes are well and mashed, we must add milk and butter as a base. To prevent curdling, it's best to use melted butter and cold milk in the refrigerator, but having both at room temperature will work just fine.

Do you want light and fluffy mashed potatoes? Well, use russets and add about 1/4 cup of milk and two tablespoons of unsalted butter per pound of potato. Do you want smooth and creamy mashed potatoes? Well, use Yukon Golds and double the ratio of milk and butter to potato, swapping out the heavy cream for milk if you really want to go crazy. Do you really want whipped potatoes? Well, try your hand at pommes aligot, a cheesy French mashed potato in which the starches are intentionally overworked. Once our eight ounces of heavy cream and four ounces of butter have been incorporated into our two pounds of Yukon Gold with rice, we will slowly and in batches add approximately 12 ounces of the firm aged Swiss cheese of your choice.

Once incorporated, we'll beat them with a large whisk until both the cheese and the overworked starch have made it stretchy, like somewhere halfway between mashed potatoes and fondue, the kind of mashed potatoes that spread on an oblong plate. , topped with Wagyu beef, demi-glace and edible flowers. The last basic requirement of any mashed potatoes you are making is, of course, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. And there you have it, plenty of formulas and ratios to get the perfect mashed potatoes to suit your mashed potato needs. But there can only be one ultimate mashed potato: fully loaded mashed potatoes.

We start with our combination of russets, butter and heavy cream, and begin our amperage increase with some crispy bacon, some finely chopped scallions, an optional teaspoon of cayenne pepper for a little heat, some scallions for a little flavor to chives and you guessed it, a few strong shakes of our Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning mixer, but even with all that buttermilk and herb flavor, we're not done. About four ounces of grated cheddar cheese and a few generous twists of freshly ground black pepper finish off our potato mashups. The time has finally come to prepare the dish, but are we finished?

Are we going to serve them as is? No friend, have you ever met me? We'll continue our flavor attack with some ranch compound butter, which is as delicious as it sounds and is made by simply adding a few shakes of our Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning Shaker to maybe half a stick of unsalted butter, beating lightly. until smooth and spreading generously over our potatoes. So we might as well add more of everything, right? A little more shredded cheese, a little more crispy bacon, more scallions and scallions, and of course, more shakes from our Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning mixer.

And there you have it, thank you Hidden Valley Ranch for sponsoring this episode and helping me make the best salad I've ever had. The Seasoning Shaker is great for adding a touch of flavor to anything you make that is missing something. You can add it to meat marinades, sprinkle it on popcorn or seasoned vegetables. For more information on Hidden Valley Ranch, check out the link in the description. (upbeat music)