Mashed potatoes

• 3 lbYukon Gold potatoes · peeled and cut into even 2 inch chunks, or russets for a fluffier and drier mash
• 2 tbspkosher salt · for the cooking water, which should taste like a well-seasoned soup
• 6 tbspunsalted butter · cold and cubed, going in before any liquid
• 1 cupwhole milk · warmed, or half milk and half heavy cream for a richer version
• 2 wholegarlic cloves · smashed, steeped in the warming milk and then removed, optional
• 1 wholebay leaf · steeped in the warming milk and removed, optional
• 1 tspfine sea salt · for seasoning at the end, added after tasting
• 1/2 tspwhite pepper · black pepper works and shows as specks, which some people mind
• 2 tbspcreme fraiche or sour cream · optional, stirred in at the very end for tang
• 2 tbspchives · finely sliced, optional, for the top

Methode

1. 1

   Yukon Gold for creamy, russet for fluffy, and do not mix them

   Yukon Golds are medium-starch and hold enough moisture to give a dense, buttery, slightly waxy mash that takes dairy well. Russets are high-starch and low-moisture, so they drink butter and cream and come out lighter and drier, which is the texture most American restaurants serve. Both are correct. Red and new potatoes are waxy, resist breaking down and give a lumpy, gummy result no matter how you treat them. Pick one variety and stay with it, because two varieties cook at different rates in the same pot.

2. 2

   Cold water start, and cut the pieces the same size

   Potatoes dropped into boiling water cook from the outside in, so the exterior is falling apart and waterlogged by the time the centre is done. Starting in cold water lets the whole piece climb through the temperature range together. Cut two-inch chunks and be genuinely fussy about consistency: a piece half the size of its neighbour is finished ten minutes earlier and spends those ten minutes absorbing water you will later have to drive off.

3. 3

   Salt the water hard, because this is your only chance

   Two tablespoons of kosher salt to a large pot. Potato is bland, dense and thirsty, and salt added at the end sits on the surface of the mash rather than inside the pieces. Salted cooking water seasons all the way through. The water should taste like a decent soup, not like the sea; pasta-water advice is too aggressive here because potatoes sit in it for half an hour rather than ten minutes.

4. 4

   A bare simmer, not a rolling boil

   Bring it up to the boil, then drop it to the point where the surface just shivers. A hard boil knocks the chunks against each other and the pot, breaking off edges that dissolve into the water and take starch and flavour with them. Twenty to twenty-five minutes for two-inch pieces. They are done when a paring knife slides in and out with no resistance at all, and when a piece lifted on the knife falls off under its own weight.

5. 5

   Drain, then put them back over the heat to dry

   This is the step almost every home recipe leaves out and it is worth more than any dairy upgrade. Drain thoroughly, return the potatoes to the empty hot pot, and set it over low heat for one to two minutes, shaking occasionally, until the surfaces go chalky and matte and you can see steam lifting off. You are evaporating surface water so the potatoes have room to absorb butter and milk instead. Wet potatoes make watery mash and then you add more butter to compensate, which does not work.

6. 6

   A ricer or a food mill, and this is where gluey mash is decided

   Potato cells are packed with starch granules. A ricer pushes cells apart while leaving most of them intact; a masher squashes and ruptures a share of them; a whisk, mixer or blender destroys them wholesale and releases free starch, which is glue. A drum ricer or a food mill gives the finest, lightest result. A hand masher gives an honest, rustic mash if you use restraint. A food processor gives wallpaper paste in about eight seconds and there is no recovery from it.

7. 7

   Rice them hot, straight out of the pot

   Work while they are too hot to hold comfortably, using a tea towel if you need to. Warm potato is soft, breaks cleanly and takes fat readily. As it cools, the starch begins to retrograde and firm, and cold potato forced through a ricer comes out in tight ricey threads that never smooth out. Rice directly back into the warm pot, off the heat, so nothing loses temperature between stages.

8. 8

   Butter before liquid, and the order is not arbitrary

   Fold the cold cubed butter into the hot riced potato first and stir until it disappears. Fat coats the starch granules and waterproofs them, so the milk that follows cannot penetrate and swell them into stickiness. Add the milk first and you get a wetter, gummier mash from the same ingredients. This is the same principle as a roux going in before stock, and it is the second-biggest lever on texture after the ricer.

9. 9

   Warm the dairy, and infuse it while you are there

   Cold milk poured into hot potato drops the temperature of the whole bowl and makes the mash seize slightly, so you stir more to fix it and make it gluier. Warm the milk in a small pan with a smashed garlic clove and a bay leaf while the potatoes boil, let it sit for ten minutes off the heat, then fish out the aromatics. It costs one extra pan and turns plain mash into something that tastes deliberate.

10. 10

    Add the milk in stages and stop before you think you should

    Pour in half, fold gently with a flexible spatula, and look at it. Mash thickens noticeably in the two minutes after you stop stirring, as residual starch hydrates and the whole thing cools slightly. What looks correct in the pot will be stiff on the plate, and what looks marginally loose in the pot will be right. Every additional stir past the point of incorporation costs you texture, so aim to be finished in about twenty folds.

11. 11

    Season at the end, and use white pepper

    Taste before you add anything. The cooking water has already done most of the work, and butter carries salt perception, so the number you need is smaller than it looks. Add fine sea salt a quarter teaspoon at a time. White pepper is the classical choice here for two reasons: it is floral rather than sharp against dairy, and it does not leave black specks in something white, which matters more than it should when the mash is the pale thing on a dark plate.

12. 12

    The tang question, and where creme fraiche belongs

    Straight butter-and-milk mash is rich and slightly flat, which is exactly right under a red-wine braise like the beef bourguignon on this site, because the sauce brings the acid. Under a plain roast chicken or a pork chop it can taste like it is missing something. Two tablespoons of creme fraiche, sour cream or buttermilk folded in at the very end fixes that without making it taste like a dip. Add it last, off the heat, and fold no more than five times.

13. 13

    Make-ahead: a double boiler, not a microwave

    Mash holds for two hours in a heatproof bowl set over barely simmering water, covered, with an extra splash of milk stirred through before serving. For a day ahead, cool it, refrigerate, and reheat in the same setup or in a covered dish at 325F for thirty minutes, again with extra warm milk. A microwave heats unevenly, and the hot spots overcook starch into rubber. Never reheat mash over direct heat, which scorches the bottom instantly.

14. 14

    Leftovers are better as something else

    Cold mash is dense because the starch has retrograded, and no reheating fully reverses that. Use it as the topping on the shepherds pie on this site, roll it into potato cakes with an egg and a spoon of flour and fry them in butter, drop it into a soup as a thickener, or stir it into bread dough for a softer crumb. Three days in the fridge, and it freezes acceptably for a month specifically because you are going to repurpose it anyway.

15. 15

    The restaurant version, and whether you want it

    Joel Robuchon's pomme puree runs close to one part butter to two parts potato by weight, passed through a fine tamis twice. It is extraordinary and it is roughly six hundred calories a portion of butter alone. The version here uses six tablespoons for three pounds, which is generous by domestic standards and modest by professional ones. If you want to move up the scale, add butter rather than cream: butter is what makes mash taste rich, cream mostly makes it looser.