Carla's Tried-and-True Mashed Potatoes

hello my little Potato Heads it's Carla and I'm here again in my kitchen today for a holiday special today I am making platonic ideal mashed potatoes making mashed potatoes is my job on Thanksgiving I bring them over to my parents house every year and all I thought I needed to do to make this video was just make that recipe that I always make but write down the measurements I did it and it was a total fail so today I've recreated what I thought was the perfect recipe with an even better more magical actually excellent recipe it is upgraded it is tweaked it is verified and it is optimized this might be my new mashed potatoes I hope it is yours too I'm excited to introduce Rosetta Stone as my partner for this video I am starting to put together my first ever trip to Korea this is a a dream trip and I'm hoping to go next year you all know that I love Korean food and Korean ingredients and you have even been kind enough to point out my mispronunciations of words like Doc if you've never bought T before or had Tu bokei which is like a delicious Korean dish that you should go out and eat I haven't studied a language since taking French in high school and back then everything was very much about memorization filling in the worksheets getting the grammar right I never felt confident about my accent and I never felt comfortable speaking aloud Rosetta Stone is completely different it is an immersive model that uses audio from native speakers and it even has a voice recognition tool so I can practice speaking aloud and get feedback within the app an didn't like that okay getting better an yes I have a special discount that's only offered to Rosetta Stone partners and I get to offer it to you the lifetime subscription is marked down from 3.99 to$ 149 that's over 60% off and if you sign up for the lifetime you have access to all of the languages forever remember to use the link in the video description it is partners. rosettastone.com SLCC car-- music thank you again to Rosetta Stone for partnering with me on this video I can't wait for my [Music] trip let's talk about choices over the years my potato of choice has been a fingerling potato they are great they're really waxy they have a super buttery texture but they are total pain in the tus to peel and if you don't peel them before you cook them and you try to put them through the ricer with the peels on you get Flex of skin I don't care for that at all when we made making perfect Thanksgiving at May mashed potatoes we use German butter balls incredible potato absolutely delicious incredible texture have to go to the farmers market to find them next up the russet potato that is where I landed the russet is very fluffy it is very starchy and it has potato flavor this is the potato that's used to make like McDonald's french fries it tastes like what Americans think of when they think of potato so I went with the ret next choice steaming boiling roasting I've always boiled then I was was like let's try steaming so that they get less water logged they came out really weird and gritty and grainy not doing that went with roasting which is the technique that I had learned from making the version with the German butter balls and what's great about it is number one on Thanksgiving you don't have to use your stove top you have enough going on so they're just going in the oven at 400 the other reason why roasting is great is because it is a dry heat method and you don't want like a water log Ed you know watery diluted potato so it concentrates the flavor it results in a dry very hot potato and you want a hot potato when you rice it or food mill it or mash it because that will keep your mashed potatoes from being gummy so now you know the choices that I went through to get here which is really meant a complete turning my back on my own personal holiday history and that is okay because I have said this before and I will say it again we are growing we are learning we are changing We Are Forever striving and we accept change and we accept new information and we go with it right because we want to keep orbiting so I orbited into a r of potato which will now orbit into my oven next choice revolves around dairy milk half in half cream some combination of all of those I not a heavy cream in my mashed potato person because I am a heavy butter in my mashed potato person cream and the amount of butter that I want for it to taste buttery it's too much so I'm going whole milk and two sticks of butter unsalted butter I can control the saltiness of this mixture what's going to happen besides just combining dairy in this pot is that I'm going to actually season the dairy mixture with garlic and Thyme and salt and pepper and all of those flavors are then going to to jump start the deliciousness of the mash so I'm combining these things in a saucepan and I'm combining them in a saucepan because this mixture has to be warm if not hot when it's combined with the potatoes you can't take hot potatoes and then put a cold Dairy mixture into it because you'll cool down the potatoes and you'll get a gummy mashed potato so we can't have that so if you have to heat up and melt your butter and warm up your milk anyway this is a great time while your potatoes are in the oven to make added value potato liquid so I'm adding a few sprigs of thy and I'm going to add this whole head of garlic so I'm just going to go across the Equator the papers can stay on because it's going to get strained later anyway and salt I'm using two teaspoons in the milk mixture the mashed potatoes will take more salt later um but this is just so this mixture is delicious and it combines with the potatoes and start seasoning it right from the beginning the amount of cracks of pepper in my recipe is 12 if you're not that into a pepper flavor six seven you can do less nine 10 11 12 and one for good luck so this is all gorgeous and mixed up and combined I'm going to pop this over medium heat I'm going to bring it up until it's simmering and once it's been simmering for 3 or 4 minutes I'm going to throw the lid on it and just let it hang out and steep just like a pot of tea potatoes are done I'm going to show you what they should look like when they are done done even though they might be tender if you check them with a cake tester before this kind of wrinkly State you want to keep going until they almost have the vibe of like starting to shrivel and collapse and if you stick a pairing knife into them they're going to pass right through with like absolutely no resistance the resistance at the top here is just that the skin is kind of crispy cuz they're out there just dry bacon away but once you get past that it's incredibly creamy and smooth inside so that's what you're looking for because if they're undercooked which I learned the hard way through a couple of failed attempts at this recipe's development you will get these like little nuggets of uncooked potato almost feels like undercooked grits and you don't want that you want something really really smooth and it starts with the potato cookery I'm going to peel these while they're really really hot uh but before I do that we're going to talk about different ways to turn a cooked potato into a fully mashed potato and really there's three tools there's ye oldi Masher sometimes these are in that squiggly pattern totally works great you're going to get a coarser let's say more rustic texture then there is America's favorite potato eracer it has a disc in the bottom a lot of models will have discs of varying sizes so it could be like a bigger diameter for a coarser texture and then very fine and you put your potato in there and then you squeeze it down just like a Play-Doh toy but my favorite is the food mill I've got the finest disc in the bottom here but it also has like a wide one and a medium they're also really great if you're doing larger volumes of potato because you know you don't want to hurt your little hand like having to squeeze over and over I small hands that really I get like tight I get like honestly fatigued by by a eracer so I'm going to use the food mill I love taking it down every Thanksgiving it makes me feel fantastic these are very hot using a pairing knife using a vegetable peeler using whatever it is that is going to work for you you want to peel your potatoes quickly so that they stay super hot if you try to mash a potato that has cooled down it's going to get gummy and weird while you're trying to mash it you'll think that you did something wrong but you didn't it's just some weird gelatinizing thing that happens with potato starch when it cools down so don't let your potato cool down another option is not peeling I don't like that option I've tried it out of like save time save a step and it's not effective because you get Flex of potato peel in the mash I don't care for that at all I want to try doing it like this like cutting it in half like it's mashed potato dinner then you're holding the guys then we're just going to scoop I love the idea of scooping I think that's easier do what whatever works for you but get the potato flesh into this thing while it's this hot these are ready to get smooshed my beautiful added value Dairy mixture came back up to steaming hot actually bubbling hot smells quite incredible so now I've got the pot that I'm going to make the mash in I like using a dutch oven or something with high Sid so I can really like get in there and smack around I'm going to straighten in this mixture first to get the bits of th leaves out the garlic skins we don't want in the finished product smells really really good this is what candles should smell like they shouldn't smell like vanilla they should smell like butter and garlic down in here I've got that whole head of garlic and you can either choose to do nothing with the garlic you could take out the individual cloves and just smash them in Winter smashing the potato or you can take those individual cloves and put them in the food mill so that when you blend your potatoes the garlic will also get smashed to Smither so just depends like how rustic do you want a little garlic nugget surprise or would you care not to have that totally up to you but now working fairly quickly because I don't want these to cool down and so I've got that really hot steamy milk and butter situation down below and and the potatoes are going to get Mill right on top that's what they look like as they're coming out I'm going to squeeze some of those cloves out ah into the food mill oo Dr garlic popper now that everybody is together I'm going to go back over low to medium heat to finish the emulsification essentially of the potato and the dairy together until it is smooth and creamy and tasty and perfect I generally like using a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon and at the beginning it's going to look like way too much liquid for the amount of potato trust the process keep stirring keep mixing and it's going to come together especially if you're making the mashed potatoes ahead of time having them be a little bit on the looser side is going to help you in the long run because when you reheat them they will have tightened up this is normally the state that I bring it to before heading over to my parents house and this is a great make aead thing people don't think the mashed potatoes can be made ahead they can absolutely be made head I would leave them in the pot that you cook them in or that you finish them in and then transport them and then reheat them over low and make sure that when you tell your sister to keep an eye on it and to continue stirring them all the way down to the bottom of the pot so that they don't Scorch that your sister actually does that so you just want to keep an eye on that otherwise the potatoes will Scorch on the bottom that has never happened to me but I just wanted you to not have it happen to you uh amazingly I have ended up with a tiny little taster bowl of potatoes and a spoon that already has mashed potatoes in it so usually I have eaten like 17 little tiny bowls of mashed potatoes before I head over for Thanksgiving dinner because you have to taste as you go these are pretty amazing they're very very close to like done I like them with a little more salt I have been told at other holiday Gatherings that they're a little too salty my dad never says that but my mom sometimes says so part of me what just wants to leave it leave it alone but actually at the time of filming it is not Thanksgiving it's just an ordinary day here in Brooklyn and I would like them to have a little more salt and a little more peps so there's so many other things that you can season at this point you could add horseradish you could add sour cream you could add tons of chopped chives you could add buttermilk to finish them right at this stage or as you are warming them back up you could do lots of things I would love for you to tell me about them I don't do any of those things I just do this and I think that this is perfect one more thing if you're potatoes look greasy as I am starting to see just a tiny bit of the butter separating from the potato I'm going to add a splash of milk and that's going to bring everything back together that might happen while you're finishing them over the heat it might happen as you're reheating them a splash of milk or a splash of water will give that fat something to hold back onto again and they will get super creamy and Luscious okay last taste these taste like the memory of the mashed potatoes that I had in my head with the new method that I had never done before so somehow I have aligned the platonic ideal in the flashback with the new modern way of pulling it all together if you're doing a buffet leave it in the Dutch oven if it's super casual the pot is hot the potatoes won't cool down if it's a little bit more of like Uptown energy and you want to put it in a platter that is the last thing that I bring out to the Buffet is the mashed potatoes so the turkey is carved the gravy is steaming hot the sides are already out there the mashed potatoes are last because the mashed potatoes being hot makes everything hot hot mashed potatoes hot gravy you could have room temperature turkey that's my [Laughter] belief um what else do we have to do here put them into the fancy thing okay

Channel: Carla Lalli Music

Views: 77,011

Keywords: carla, carla lalli, carla lalli music, carla mashed potatoes, carla lalli mashed potatoes, carla lalli music mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes recipe, thanksgiving recipe, how to make mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes from scratch, mashed potatoes at home, carla lalli music ba, carla lalli ba, carla ba, carla lalli music bon appetit, carla lalli bon appetit, carla bon appetit, thanksgiving mashed potatoes recipe, thanksgiving mashed potatoes

Id: DitxaYy8buo

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 05 2023