Friday, September 28, 2012

WHY YOU SHOULD EAT MASHED POTATOES

Why should you eat mashed potatoes?  I wish every question were as easy to answer as this one: you should eat them because VIRTUALLY EVERY COMMON VEGETABLE TASTES GREAT WITH THEM. If you're not getting enough vegetables then here's your solution.

I know, I know...you're worried about the starch. Well, the USDA gives them a clean bill of health and so do I. Listen, I had mashed potatoes almost every day for the whole time I was growing up and I was skinny as a rail. I always ate a decent amount of vegetables at dinner and I didn't even like vegetables. I only ate them because they seemed to go well with the potatoes.


And it wasn't just me. Lots of my friends ate mashed potatoes and none of us ever got fat. The girls pictured above probably ate mashed potatoes...everybody did when I was a kid and there were much fewer obese people then than now. 

Later we became New Agers and turned against mashed potatoes in favor of rice, because it was more exotic. Big mistake! Vegetables can taste great with rice if the meal's an Asian dish cooked the Asian way, but if you cook a standard Western dinner and simply substitute rice for mashed potatoes, the vegetables suck, and you end up ignoring them. Some American rice eaters give up vegetables entirely.

I told this to a friend who was horrified that I'd even think of eating a potato. He was an ex-hippie who regarded potatoes as a CIA plot to make us lethargic so The Man could manipulate us easier. It's hard to know what to say to someone like that.

He regailed me with stories of vegetables he'd eaten in restaurants that were to die for, and which didn't require a bit of potato. Weeeeell, that's true...I'll concede that if you can afford to have a chef with a well-stocked kitchen cook all your vegetables, then you don't need potatoes. He can saute the vegetables in stock, give them a hint of mango, a little chervil ( a French spice not sold in most American supermarkets), three kinds of oil, expensive brands of balsamic vinegar, and top them with a little cognac....yeah, if you can afford to eat that way every day then you don't need potatoes. 


So why not baked potatoes instead of mashed potatoes? Well, they taste great, but they don't blend with vegetables as well as MP. Also, they require chives and sour cream and those are pricey if the only time you ever use them is in small amounts on potatoes. They'll rot in the refrigerator (above).  


So how do you cook mashed potatoes? My parents just boiled russets whole (not chopped up) til they were soft, put them in a bowl, peeled and chopped them, added whole milk, (nowadays most people prefer Half and Half) and a little melted butter then mashed them with a masher til the lumps were out. They were always eaten hot, immediately after mashing, with a side of cranberries, and with meat and vegetables. Yum!


I looked up mashed potatoes in the American Test Kitchen Cookbook and their concern was fluffiness. To get the lumps out they recommended buying a mill or a ricer (like a giant garlic press) to squeeze the potatoes into spaghetti which you stir into fluff. Right away I saw a mill on sale for ten bucks, and I bought it.  


Aaaargh! What a nightmare! The mill was clunky, too light to sit still, and absorbed half of the potato into its complicated inner workings. It reduced a medium-sized russet to a golf ball. What a gyp! And cleaning the thing was a real chore. Apparently the Test Kitchen has the luxury of top of the line equipment and a staff dishwasher!

Okay, end of rant!

BTW: squash is the exception. It doesn't work with mashed potatoes.


11 comments:

Ian Merch! said...

I'm going to have to disagree with the American Test Kitchen: Mashed Potatoes are a versatile side dish that can be made any number of ways. My fiancee and I prefer ours thicker, with the skins on, with a bit of garlic thrown into the potatoes while they boil. I've have very fine and very fluffy mashed potatoes that were both very good. My dear old grandma happens to put an entire stick of butter into her's, which sounds outrageous, but man are they good. I know people who put bacon, or sour cream, or onion or chives in it. It's a staple that, if you grow up with it, I think you take it very seriously, and as you grow as a cook and into your sense of taste, you know exactly how to fix them up the way you want them.

The only real thing you have to watch out for, when making mashed potatoes, I feel, is getting the wrong kind of potato. I love the taste of a yukon gold potato, but they mash very poorly, and don't taste quite right. Russets and red potatoes seem to be the key to making a good mash.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Ian: Yikes! I may have given the wrong impression about the Test Kitchen. Their book included recipes for several kinds of mashed potatoes, including the kinds you mentioned. I'm sure they work fine. I didn't mention them because I'd run out of space.

Yukon Golds are great for French Fries but I agree that they don't make the best mashed potatoes.

I have what looks like a great recipe for dietetic French Fries but I've only tried it once. The potatoes are soaked with water before deep frying. The theory is that no fat from the oil will seep in as long as the water in the potato is turning to steam and pushing outward. The trick is to remove them from the oil the instant the internal water is used up.

r. clayton said...

So why not baked potatoes instead of mashed potatoes?

Here's one for baked over mashed: ketchup and barbecue sauce go much better with baked potatoes than with mashed (and remember: ketchup is a vegetable). On the other hand, it's easier to add roasted garlic to mashed potatoes than baked. Ugh, life is so hard.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

R. Clayton: Ketchup and barbeque sauce on a baked potato!!!??? Maybe the next time I eat a baked potato I'll try a little bit of that, but I'm not optimistic about the result.

Kelly Toon said...

I like A1 sauce with a baked potato, usually with a steak as well ;)

I am one of those low-carb types, so sometimes I will steam a bunch of cauliflower and mash it with butter and cream. It looks like mashed potatoes, it tastes like mashed potatoes, and it holds the other vegetables and sauce like mashed potatoes. I also make cauliflower "rice" and it also makes a great substitute for pasta in Mac n Cheese recipes.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Kelly: Good Lord!!!! You're tinkering with traditions that are the very foundation of life in the Western world!

Unknown said...

I'm a huge mashed potatoes fan myself and wish my parents knew how to make it. They are always cooking rice and it gets old quickly.

Remember that post you did on economics a while ago. BBC came out with these three documentaries explaining the differences between Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, and Karl Marx in the way they thought about economics and their solutions to the inevitable busts that can occur. Here's the Hayek documentary. I haven't watched the other two yet, but I think Hayek had the best ideas out of all of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CrvxrhbBoY

Unknown said...

The Karl Marx episode of Masters of Money premieres tomorrow, but you can also watch the other two episodes on this website just in case YouTube doesn't work out. I didn't realize that they hadn't aired all the episodes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mzqw9/episodes/guide

Jorge Garrido said...

Eddie, this theory is genius, I'm going to try it!

Kelly: Ewwwwwww!

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Roberto: Thanks much for the link! I'll watch it in a day or two. Maybe I'll watch the whole series if they're all on YouTube.

I love Hayek. I want to memorize part of the dueling rap song I put up a while back with Keynes and Hayek debating.

Anonymous said...

I like regular whole potatoes. Preferably with the peel on. Mash only accompanies certain types of dishes here. But then, I'm Norwegian and our food culture is completely different. ;P