A word about butter: Don't melt butter before stirring it into the potatoes because the milk solids and fat will separate. You can add cold butter to your hot potatoes since the butter will melt as a whole and distribute the fat and milk solids evenly.
When you melt butter on the stove, its milk solids and fat separate. Adding cold butter to your potatoes will allow the butter to melt as a whole and distribute the fat and milk solids evenly.
Butter helps make the starchy texture of potatoes richer and eliminates that "cling" some potatoes get when they're freshly mashed.
The Mistake: Overworking the Potatoes with a Food Processor, Blender or Mixer. Too much — or too vigorous — mashing will produce gluey potatoes. Your best tool is an old-fashioned masher, fork, ricer or food mill.
If kept warm, gently mash in heavy cream until smooth and loose again, adding more if you'd like. If cold, heat the cream in a large pot until steaming, then add the potatoes. Gently mash and whip, adding more cream as needed, until heated through and fluffy.
Here's how to do it: For every pound of potatoes in your mash, drizzle 1 tablespoon of melted butter over the dish and fold it gently into the potatoes. If the mash is still too gluey for your liking, repeat the process with another tablespoon of butter.
CREAMED MASHED POTATOES Add 85g/3oz butter and 150ml/5-6fl oz double cream to the mashed potato. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add nutmeg to taste and mix until smooth and creamy.
Heavy cream will make for the creamiest mashed potatoes, but whole milk or half and half will also work. Don't use anything with less fat than whole milk, otherwise, your potatoes won't be as flavorful or creamy.
Skip the whole milk and go for half-and-half or cream.
Liquid dairy is what makes mashed potatoes luscious and creamy. Since it's Thanksgiving, splurge a little and use half-and-half or splurge a lot and use cream.
Swap Out the Water
In fact, when you mix the potato flakes with the warm broth, the result is a creamier, more buttery-tasting bowl of spuds. You can also swap milk or half-and-half for the water required.
Melted or liquid butter will thin out your batter, giving you ultra-flat cookies or cakes that are dense and uneven.
Beating softened butter and sugar together, which is called creaming, traps air in the mix, giving the cake more lift and a more open structure. Mixing melted butter and sugar does not trap air, so your cake will be more dense and less open.
If you're looking for flakiness, cold butter is the way to go. You want the butter to be as solid as possible before working with it in the dough, so that it will keep its shape in layers rather than seeping into the dough and tenderizing it.
Do NOT add cold liquid. Make sure the milk or cream you add to your potatoes is HOT. This helps it absorb better so you don't feel the need to overmix. Overmixing is bad.
The skin of a potato contains many vitamins and minerals, plus fiber and iron. High in vitamins C and B6, which help aid the immune system, skin-on mashed potatoes over Thanksgiving could help fight off the holiday sniffles.
If you're using salted butter, that extra 1 teaspoon of salt might make the mashed potatoes inedible for certain palates. Thus, it's best to go with unsalted butter to avoid such mishaps.
Luckily, there's an easy way to do this: Don't overwork your potatoes. As The Kitchn explains, potatoes will release starch when they're mixed and mashed. Once there is too much starch in your mashed potato mixture, the texture will quickly turn from fluffy to gummy.
The yolk emulsifies water and fat to create a cohesive, velvety bite, while providing a little fat and body of its own. What is this? You can add an egg yolk to nearly any existing mashed potato recipe.
Use heavy cream or half-and-half for rich, creamy potatoes like you get at fancy steakhouses. Whole milk, light sour cream, or plain yogurt work well if you want to reduce the fat.
The trick to the most fluffy mashed potatoes is to add a leavening agent like baking powder or baking soda. Just a pinch of baking powder added to the drained, cooked potatoes can help make them so fluffy.