Homestyle Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are hands down the first side dish gone every holiday. No matter how large the bowl of homestyle mashed potatoes is, it will be empty, guaranteed. Every time.

Fluffy Mashed Potatoes

As much as we love mashed potatoes I am not a fan of peeling potatoes. To avoid peeling potatoes use golden potatoes for your mashed potatoes. The skins are so thin you can leave them on. You can imagine how excited I was when I first discovered this trick.

Rich, thick and fluffy mashed potatoes with small, soft, potato pieces and skins that melt into the creaminess are exactly what you will get with this recipe. Yes, skin-on mashed potatoes can still be fluffy!

No peeling necessary, no fancy tools, just a quick mashing on the stovetop delivers some of the best mashed potatoes you’ve ever tasted.

Chopping the potatoes into small chunks before boiling them will allow them to cook really fast. Then you’ll drain them and mash them right in the same hot pot you boiled them in.

Homestyle Mashed Potatoes

By putting them back in the pot on very low while you mash them it does a couple of things. One, it cooks off any excess water that might still be there after draining. Second, it keeps your potatoes hot longer and perhaps most important fewer dirty dishes in your sink.

To help keep your mashed potatoes with heavy cream hot I always get all of my ingredients out of the refrigerator when I start my potatoes. This will allow them to come up a bit closer to room temperature before I use them. It is always best to do this or slightly warm those items.

Putting straight from the refrigerator butter, cream cheese, sour cream, and heavy cream into your hot potatoes will drastically reduce the temperature of the mashed potatoes.

For the richest potatoes, I love to add a bit of cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and cream, but you can certainly tweak it to your own tastes. Don’t like cream cheese? Swap in a little extra butter or sour cream. It’s easy to make this recipe your own.

The ingredient list might look lengthy at first glance, but I promise this recipe comes together with just a few minutes of hands-on effort. The butter, cream cheese, and sour cream melt right into the hot potatoes.

Mashed Potatoes with Skin

If you are thinking I am crazy for making my mashed potatoes with skin, you are wrong, my friend. If you’ve never tried skin-on mashed potatoes, start with golden potatoes.

They have very thin skins, to begin with. Then when you wash them and give them a rough scrub some of the skin comes off already. A more vigorous scrub and there will literally be no skin left. So much easier than peeling!

Yukon Golds are naturally not quite as starchy as other potatoes and they tend to not absorb as much water as compared to a russet potato. Goldens also have a natural buttery flavor perfect for producing creamy homestyle mashed potatoes, even with the skin on.

My obsession with mashed potatoes is a healthy one, or at least I like to think so. For a rustic, chunkier mash I like this version with a non-slip handle, it is sturdier and feels comfortable in my hand. For a finer mash, and for things like guacamole or egg salad this masher with a horizontal handle is my favorite.

Golden Mashed Potatoes

Using the typical list of ingredients, including all the butter, heavy cream, cream cheese, and sour cream you can still get fluffy homestyle mashed potatoes with the skin on. I call it the fluffy mashed potato trifecta, plus one of ingredients.

• yellow potatoes
• butter 
• cream cheese
• sour cream
• garlic powder
• kosher salt
• freshly ground pepper
• heavy cream
• Italian parsley

I am a big believer in that while some side dishes we tend to serve only at the holidays, mashed potatoes deserve to be served year around.

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