RecipesCharles Sieg

Best Mashed Potatoes

Yukon Golds mashed with two sticks of salted butter, warm cream, and sour cream, and left a little chunky.

Best Mashed Potatoes: A wide stoneware bowl of coarse, buttery mashed gold potatoes with a few small chunks left in and a pool of melted butter on top, a wooden spoon resting in the bowl
Total time
50min
servings
10

Method

A line, step, tool, or note tagged Filled in was added by the editor because the original left it out.

  1. Peel the potatoes. Cut into cubes, i.e. 1/8ths.
  2. Put potatoes in water. Bring to a boil. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until fork tender.
  3. MEANWHILE: Melt the butter. Warm the cream. Mix the butter and cream and salt. Should be one fluid mixture.
  4. Drain potatoes. DRY them also. No water should be left.
  5. Mash the potatoes until there are no cubes left. Leave coarse and chunky.
  6. Pour butter mixture into the potatoes. Mash the butter mixture in well.
  7. Add the sour cream. Continue mashing until all is well-blended and there are only a few small chunks left.
  8. Done.

Notes

Tips

  • To dry the potatoes, drain them, put them back in the hot pot over low heat, and shake the pot for a minute or two until the steam stops rising.
    Filled in
  • Warm the butter and cream gently in the small saucepan. The mixture only needs to be hot enough to pour as one liquid; it should not boil.
    Filled in

Scaling

  • A doubled batch needs a much bigger pot and takes longer to come to a boil. The simmer time stays about the same, because the cubes are the same size.
    Filled in

Nutrition Facts

10 servings per recipe

Serving sizeabout 1 cup

Amount per serving

Calories410

% Daily Value*

  • Total Fat 32g41%
  • Saturated Fat 19g95%
  • Trans Fat 1g
  • Cholesterol 90mg30%
  • Sodium 650mg28%
  • Total Carbohydrate 30g11%
  • Dietary Fiber 4g14%
  • Total Sugars 4g
  • Includes 0g Added Sugars0%
  • Protein 4g
  • Vitamin D 0.4mcg2%
  • Calcium 60mg4%
  • Iron 1mg6%
  • Potassium 800mg15%

* The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

How this label was figured
Ingredient lineCountedUSDA foodNote
4 lbs. Yukon gold potatoes1,814 gPotatoes, white, flesh and skin, raw
2 sticks of salted Plugra226 gButter, salted
1 cup of heavy cream238 gCream, fluid, heavy whipping
1 cup of sour cream230 gCream, sour, cultured
2 tsps of salt12 gSalt, table
  • The label counts all 4 pounds of potatoes, peel included, so a real serving comes in slightly lower.
  • The potatoes are figured with the USDA’s values for white potatoes, which is the closest entry it has to a Yukon Gold.

How mashed potatoes got this rich

An Andean crop, an English cookbook of 1747, a Paris chef famous for his butter, and a Canadian potato named for a gold rush.

The potato was domesticated about 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in what is now southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia, and the Spanish brought it to Europe in the second half of the 16th century.

An early recipe for mashing it is in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, published in 1747: “Boil your potatoes, peel them, and put them into a saucepan, mash them well; to two pounds of potatoes put a pint of milk, a little salt, stir them well together, take care they don’t stick to the bottom, then take a quarter of a pound of butter, stir it in and serve it up.” That is one part butter to eight parts potato, which is the same ratio as the recipe on this page.

The famously rich version belongs to the French chef Joël Robuchon. “The mashed potatoes, it’s true, made my reputation,” he said. “I owe everything to these mashed potatoes.” Accounts of his ratio differ. Tasting Table gives two parts potato to one part butter, and The Local, quoting his television show, gives a kilogram of potatoes to 250 grams of butter, which is four to one.

The potato in this recipe is much younger. Gary Johnston developed the Yukon Gold in Guelph, Ontario, from a cross made in 1966, and it reached the market in 1980. It was first called Yukon, for the Yukon River of the Klondike Gold Rush; the Gold was added for its color.

Sources

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