According to Serious Eats, when your mashed potatoes end up with a pasty or a gluey consistency, it's due to an excess of starch. As a result, limiting the amount of starch in your dish is the key to nailing perfect mashed potatoes. Luckily, there's an easy way to do this: Don't overwork your potatoes.
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.
The Mistake: Cutting Potatoes Into Too-Small Pieces
They'll absorb too much water during cooking, preventing them from soaking up all the yummy butter and cream when it comes time for mashing. The best-size chunks for boiling: about 1 1/2 inches.
Add a Thickening Agent
This is the most common, and perhaps the simplest way, to thicken mashed potatoes. You can use what you have on hand: Flour, cornstarch, or powdered milk are all solid options that are probably already in your pantry.
But if you've made them a little too runny for your taste, don't worry! You don't have to throw them out just yet. To thicken mashed potatoes, you can add a thickening agent like cornstarch, flour, powdered milk, or tapioca. Add one tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency.
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.
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.
Or just as bad, you overcook them.
The problem with overcooked potatoes is that they absorb a ton of water. When you go to mash them, they'll be soupy and sad. One way to fix them is by placing them in a pot over low heat and gently cooking them. The excess water will turn into steam, and your mash will dry out.
Butter helps make the starchy texture of potatoes richer and eliminates that "cling" some potatoes get when they're freshly mashed.
Step 1: Soak Potato Pieces
Soak the baking potatoes for just a few minutes in cold water to release some of their starch so the cooked spuds don't get gluey. A combination of starchy bakers and more waxy, buttery Yukon Golds creates an ideal creamy-yet-fluffy final texture in the mash.
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.
“Salting the water not only seasons the potato, but it also allows it to boil to a hotter temperature. This in turn cooks the potatoes' starch more thoroughly, resulting in a more creamy texture [for mashed potatoes],” says Sieger Bayer, Chef and Partner at The Heritage.
Start With the Proper Potato
You want to avoid low-starch, high-moisture potatoes such as red bliss or white potatoes, which need more exuberant mashing to break them down, potentially overworking the starch and turning them gluey.
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.
Do not add cold milk or cream to the pot of piping hot potatoes. Not only will this cool the dish down, but the cold liquid will not absorb into the hot potatoes very well. Warm the liquid in a saucepan on the stovetop or in a glass measuring cup in the microwave.
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.
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.
They absorb liquids brilliantly, which is why they mash so well. But when you boil them in water, the liquid they are absorbing is just that, water, which can make for a less flavorful mash. By boiling the potatoes in salted milk, they are absorbing creaminess and seasoning, which makes them inherently more flavorful.
Just too easy to overmix. The starch cells in the potato break down and you get a mushy or runny texture. My personal favorite tool for creamy mashed Idaho russets is to use a ricer for a smooth potato look that still has some texture and a little dryness.
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.
Warm the milk in a small saucepan before incorporating it into your mash. 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.