Everybody knows how to make mashed potatoes, right? Just boil a few potatoes, drain, mash ’em up with some liquid such as milk and add salt and pepper to taste. Boring! For mashed potatoes that get noticed try giving your potatoes a little tender loving care.
Fresh firm potatoes are important. If your potatoes have begun to get soft their texture when boiled will become too watery. The variety of potato you use is a matter of personal taste. Peel and cut your potatoes into small pieces. Smaller pieces of potatoes will cook more quickly. Don’t overcook your potato pieces. Potatoes are done when you can easily insert a fork into a piece that you have removed from the boiling water. Make sure that there is still just a tiny bit of resistance to the fork so that the potatoes will be able to retain the correct consistency when the other ingredients are added. Don't allow your potatoes to sit in the cooking water for any length of time.
Drain your potatoes and return them to the pot in which they boiled. Next, allow yourself some creativity. Do the initial mashing of the potatoes. (The potato mashers that have wavy metal wire-like mashers are preferable to the solid round mashers). Add sour cream, soft cream cheese, and margarine; nonfat or fat-free varieties of these products works perfectly well. Use equal parts of sour cream, soft cream cheese, and margarine (or butter), the amounts used will depend on the quantity of potatoes you have cooked. Mash the potatoes again and stir in other ingredients until well blended. Add salt and pepper or other herbs or spices.
For more variety of flavors consider adding other vegetables to the potatoes as they boil, such as shredded carrots, peeled garlic cloves, or minced onions. Shredded or grated cheeses can be added while mashing the potatoes. Creamy salad dressings such as ranch or blue cheese can be substituted for the sour cream.
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