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.
A hand blender (immersion blender) will release too much starch from the potatoes and result in heavy and gummy mashed potatoes. When you use a hand mixer, you can whip in much more liquid and fat without releasing too much starch from the potatoes. It also results in a very smooth and creamy texture. That's it!
According to Kitchn, using a blender or food processor to make mashed potatoes results in a sticky, glued-up, incredibly viscous mess that is not at all like the fluffy mashed potatoes you would want.
Use a hand masher for chunkier, more textural potatoes that are still light and creamy. Use a stand mixer or electric hand mixer for densely creamy potatoes, the heavy kind you have to use your fork as forklift to transport from plate to mouth.
The equipment you use to mash your potatoes will have a big effect on their texture. Masher: Even with a good workout, some lumps are inevitable. A ricer provides the gentlest touch for the fluffiest mash. More aggressive than a ricer, a food mill will still produce fluffy results—and a super-smooth texture.
Hand mixer
It shocked me too. But Sevier says his mom breaks out the hand mixer every time she makes mashed potatoes, and they are, I'm quoting here, “the best mashed potatoes you will ever have.” Potatoes made this way are light and fluffy with a few lumps, and they come together very quickly.
You need a Kitchen Aid Mixer and the standard paddle attachment. You could also use a whisk attachment once your potatoes have started to get mashed – this can give them a little more airy texture.
Luckily for you, we've just discovered the optimum way for making mashed potatoes. And believe it or not, it involves a whisk... Thanks to @bxgumxo on TikTok, we now know that to make the fluffiest mash ever, you simply need to use an electric whisk. Yep!
For starters, potato ricers are the secret to creamy, fluffy, lump-free mashed potatoes. The ricer actually incorporates air into the potatoes as it pushes them through, giving them amazing texture.
Too much whipping (or mashing) will give you sticky — not fluffy — mashed potatoes. Make the best of it and turn them into cheesy mashed potato cups: Mix the potatoes with grated cheddar and an egg, then scoop the mixture into lightly greased muffin cups.
Restaurants prepare the potatoes ahead by boiling and mashing just the potato, then just before serving, it is mixed into boiling cream (or milk or even broth or a combination thereof) to reheat it and make it nice and creamy.
The absolute best way to mash potatoes depends entirely on how you prefer to eat them: If you like them fluffy and somewhat lumpy, use a hand masher. If you like them perfectly smooth and airy, use a food mill. If you like them velvety but not at all gluey, use a tamis.
Start cooking the potatoes in cold water: This ensures that the potatoes cook evenly. Otherwise, if you start with hot or boiling water, the outsides of the potatoes cook and soften while the middles are still hard and crunchy.
Use a potato masher to mash until almost smooth, then use the back of a spoon to press the mash through a fine sieve into a bowl.
A potato ricer may not be an essential piece of cookware for most people, but there's no denying that it guarantees perfectly smooth mashed potatoes. We think the Oxo Good Grips adjustable potato ricer is the best choice for this job.
What is the difference between potato ricer and a potato masher? For rustic mashed potatoes with texture, a masher not only provides a bit of a workout but will also help you maintain some texture. A ricer will produce smoother and creamier mash.
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.
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.
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.
Cover the potatoes with water and season with 1 teaspoon of the salt. Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender. Drain the potatoes and return them to the saucepan. Add 1/2 cup of the butter, hot milk, sour cream, and salt to taste; mash thoroughly with a potato masher until very creamy.
When potatoes are mashed, starch is released. The more you work the potatoes, the more starch gets released. When too much starch gets released, the potatoes become gummy, gluey, and unappetizing.
Sure, you can't use a hand mixer to knead bread dough or shape pasta, but for that, I can use my hands. Hand mixers are also super easy to clean, and because they're not tethered to one large unit, you can use whatever sized mixing bowl you need, helpful for when you want to scale up a recipe.