Easy Homemade Mashed Potatoes

November 8th, 2021 By Recipes by Sugar

Recipe Credit: Recipes By Sugar

Homemade Mashed Potatoes are one of those dishes I grew up on. My Mom’s mashed potatoes were always so creamy and smooth. The nice thing with mashed potatoes is you can make as much as you want. You can do a single serving or feed a large group. I try not to make mashed potatoes too often as they aren’t exactly that healthy. But if I could, I would make them with every meal. My favorite meal to have with mashed potatoes is my Easy Crockpot Chicken and Noodles recipe. These two recipes just belong together in my book. As I grow older, it amazes me the amount of people that rarely make mashed potatoes and use potatoes out of a box. I hope you enjoy this recipe and find it fairly simple to make.

Ingredients for Homemade Mashed Potatoes

• 5 lbs russet potatoes
• 1 stick butter
• 8 oz sour cream
• 1/2 to 1 cup of milk or half and half

Utensils Needed

• Stock Pot
• Knife
• Cutting board
• Potato masher
• Potato peeler – optional
• Strainer
• Hand mixer – optional

Directions for Homemade Mashed Potatoes

Prep Time: 15 minutes – 30 minutes / Cook Time: 30 minutes – 45 minutes

1. Fill your stock pot half way with cold water.
2. Dump potatoes in sink and rinse well.
3. Next, using your cutting board and knife, cut potatoes. I typically cut into 1 inch squares, shown in below picture. (You can cut in half or quarter potatoes but will result in a longer boil time.)
4. As you cut the potatoes, place in stock pot with water.
5. Once you have all potatoes cut, make sure they are completely covered in water, may need to add more.
6. Place stock pot on large burner and turn to high.
7. Once water is boiling, you can turn down to medium – high heat, but continue to boil for 10 – 15 minutes.
8. Take a fork and stab a potato with it. If it easily goes through, potatoes are done. If it is hard, continue to boil. Check every 5 minutes. You can also opt to eat one to test doneness.
9. Once they are done, dump potatoes in a strainer in the sink to strain water.
10. Turn burner to low.
11. Dump potatoes back into stock pot, place back on burner.
12. Add the stick of butter to potatoes and mash with potato masher.
13. Once mashed well, add sour cream and milk.
14. Continue to mash and stir until cream is mixed in. You can add extra milk to thin out potatoes.

Variations

• We like the skin on our potatoes, if you would like to peel the skin off, do so after step 2 before cutting potatoes. (This will add about 10 – 15 minutes to the prep time, but will result in even creamier potatoes).
• Once you have mashed you potatoes, you can use a a hand held mixer to mash further, this will also make them creamier. (Make sure not to scrape bottom of pot with mixer)
• You can easily add garlic or Parmesan or both to add extra flavor to potatoes.
• You can replace sour cream with Mayo, I have heard of this by lots of people but will never do it myself. Feel free to try that and let me know what you think.
• You can easily leave out the butter, sour cream, and milk. The potatoes will not be as creamy. But this would give you the dairy free option. You could try dairy free butter and almond milk or almond cream.