Monday, November 30, 2009

Lots Of Tips On Making Mashed Potatoes

By Ben Cook

There are many ways to prepare mashed potatoes and these are one of the most popular ways to prepare mashed potatoes. Normally potatoes are too hard to mash as they need to be cooked first. Usually potatoes are baked or boiled until they are soft enough to mash with a ricer, mixer, potato masher or fork. There are also instant mashed potatoes available made from dehydrated potatoes, just add hot water.

The type of potatoes that you use for mashed potatoes as certain potatoes are better than others. Typically the best types of potatoes to use are floury potatoes but if you want a different texture to your potatoes you have the option of using waxy potatoes. A lot of times other ingredients will be added to the potatoes, such as milk, butter, cream or vegetable oil to make them creamier.

You can also flavor your mashed potatoes as you can add parsley, spices, mustard, bacon bits, salt, pesto, turnips, wasabi, onions, cheese, garlic or pesto. There is also a special type of French mashed potatoes that incorporates egg yolks. You mashed the potatoes add the egg yolks and then pipe the mashed potatoes into ribbons and rosettes and bake until brown.

If you are watching your weight and counting calories then you can still enjoy a low fat, low calorie version of mashed potatoes by substituting soup stock or broth instead of cream and butter. It is also important that you don't overcook the potatoes you are going to mash as potatoes that are overcooked tend to create mashed potatoes that have the consistency of glue.

To easily incorporate any seasonings to your mashed potatoes you should first mash the potatoes and then mix in the other ingredients. This helps keep the starch molecules intake as broken starch molecules produce a gluey consistency. This is particularly of importance when using a mixer to make mashed potatoes. You also can ensure that the added ingredients are distributed evenly throughout the mashed potatoes.

Mashed potatoes are a comfort food for many individuals and are important for many holiday meals, particularly Thanksgiving. When preparing mashed potatoes you should allow pound of raw potatoes per person. If your potatoes sometime change color you can add a very small amount of vinegar to the water. This will help the potatoes maintain their white color.

Many people consider mashed potatoes to be a type of comfort food and it is an important part of the Thanksgiving holiday. Generally when preparing mashed potatoes you should allow for pound of potatoes per person. If you want the potatoes to maintain their white color you can add a bit of vinegar to the boiling water.

You can add a little bit of oil or butter to the boiling potatoes to ensure that they potatoes do not boil over. Another tip is to add warm milk instead of cold milk in order to create fluffy potatoes. You can also create every fluffy potatoes by adding a small amount of baking soda to the milk you are going to add to the potatoes.

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