How to Make the Best Mashed Potato Cakes from Scratch

[Music] i love leftovers and i'm not the only one in this 1960s cookbook called the i hate to cook book pegbracken wrote well some women can keep a leftover going like an eight day clock their sunday's roast becomes monday's hash which becomes tuesday's stuffed peppers which eventually turn up as tamale pie and so on until it disappears or daddy does well we don't have daddy here but we have ashley and we're going to find out what happens when you can't count on leftovers so ashley's going to show us how to make great mashed potato cakes from scratch yes i am and we don't want to settle here because mashed potato cakes are traditionally made with leftover mashed potatoes but the problem is you never know how much dairy or butter somebody used in that original recipe so the potato cakes can turn out really loose or really gluey so we found that the best way was to make the filling ourselves we're control freaks so these are two and a half pounds of russet potatoes which we chose because we like the starchier texture and also they were a lot fluffier when they got mashed and we peeled and had these lengthwise and then cut them into quarter inch slices okay so i'm just going to put these into the saucepan here and i'm going to fill the saucepan with some water and you just want to cover it by about one inch that looks good we have one tablespoon of salt and this will help for seasoning the potatoes while they cook bring this water to a boil reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the potatoes until they're done which will take about eight to ten minutes so we're not breaking any new ground here we're boiling potatoes right exactly all right all right so it's been about eight minutes and the way you know that the potatoes are done is that you insert this paring knife here and if it meets no resistance yeah they're done tender tender tender tender i'm gonna drain these and i put them back into the saucepan i'm gonna leave them here for about five minutes just to cool down a little bit and also just to let any excess moisture evaporate off okay so it's been about five minutes and these seem to have cooled down a bit now it's time to add the flavorful ingredients to our mashed potatoes first i'm going to start with one ounce of finely grated parmesan cheese which is about a half a cup cheesy mash yay smash one egg yolk the parmesan and the egg yolk are gonna act both as binders we have a quarter cup of chopped fresh chives here three quarter teaspoon salt and one quarter teaspoon of pepper and i'm going to mash these all together in the saucepan and you want to do this until it's nice and smooth but you'll notice i haven't put any milk or any butter in here no nothing and that'll fry up better because it's more cohesive all right i'd say these look about right i'm gonna move over here to this large bowl and just scrape out the mixture and everything's really nicely incorporated so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna transfer this to the refrigerator just to let it completely cool for about one hour [Music] all right fridget so these have been in the refrigerator for one hour and they are nice and cool we have two shallow pie plates and here we have two eggs and here we have two cups of panko bread crumbs lightly beat these eggs here this is going to be our glue and using this half cup measure we are going to and yes i said we divide this mashed potato cake filling into eight portions and i was wondering would you help i will okay you're going to show me one i will all right all right so what i'm going to do is form each patty three inches wide and it's going to be three quarters of an inch thick in height all right so i'm going to just lightly put this in the egg coating here you can use a fork you don't have to use a fork you can just use your old forks your hands if you'd prefer to and let any excess drip off all right and then place it into the pancake i'm going to go for here thank you yes that's great and the only thing i would ask is just be sure not to forget about the sides because you want to make sure that all the sides get really nicely breaded there all right and then we have a large plate here that we can put all of our formed patties onto does that look good oh my gosh thanks wow this is in your first rodeo i don't know all right we've got the last one great job i'm just gonna leave these here on the counter for about five minutes and the eggs and the bread crumbs are gonna form together and just form a really nice outer shell sticking together yep so i have a half a cup of vegetable oil which i've been heating over medium-high heat and it looks like it's about shimmering which is what i wanted it to do yes all right and i'm gonna put four carefully into the skillet we're gonna cook this for about three minutes on the first side until nice and golden brown and i'm gonna go around and press it just to make sure that all of the mashed potato cake is in contact with the oil contact means brown perfect all right it's been three minutes so using two spatulas i am going to flip them carefully yummy those look magnificent and they're holding their shape all right so i'm gonna cook the second side for about two minutes until that side is golden brown as well okay it has been two minutes and i just checked and the bottoms look perfect so do you mind just holding that paper towel line plate there for me i will do whatever you want as long as i get a mashed potato cake at the end maybe you'll get two so i'm using the paper towels here just to collect any extra grease or oil thank you very much and now what i'm gonna do is some of the panko bread crumbs get really dark so instead of burning my second batch or making them look a little freckled i'm going to discard this oil and use fresh oil for this okay and for extra insurance i'm going to wipe out the skillet with a lot of paper towels here and because it's non-stick it comes up really really easily all right nice empty skillet now i'm going to heat this again over medium-high heat with a fresh half cup of vegetable oil so i'm going to heat this oil until it's shimmering and i'm going to cook the second batch of mashed potato cakes for the same amount of time three minutes for the first side until golden brown flip them with my two spatulas two minutes on the second side and then we're close to done close to done sweet yeah [Music] bridgette the moment is almost here and i'm excited yeah all right so it's been three minutes on the first side two minutes on the second side all right i'm gonna transfer the remaining four to this paper towel line plate make some room here for daddy oh yeah and mama i've never made mashed potato cakes that look at anything close to this usually they're so kind of loose it's more like an actual pancake right right i'm starving yeah you think and you can see here we have some sour cream for a little topping and you're gonna thank me later for that i promise i'm probably gonna thank you now okay i'd like to do a big cheers i would too oh you hear those crunchy crispy definitely and the inside really fluffy really fluffy it's like everything i like in a twice baked potato but crispy and crunchy on the outside you nailed it that is that is perfect because it really does taste like that creamy interior of a twice baked potato i love that you didn't have to cook anything other than the potatoes so you weren't sauteing onions and garlic at all really simple very smart oh i think who needs leftovers i sure don't because our mashed potato cakes are the best because they're made from scratch you start with boiled russet potatoes then to bind the potato filling mash the spuds with an egg yolk and parmesan cheese that parmesan cheese adds tons of flavor shape then bread the cakes with panko crumbs and fry them in two batches for the ultimate hearty crunchy coating so there you have it from cook's country the best recipe for mashed potato cakes you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at cookscountry.com i'm going to tear into the rest of this oh me too girl thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 1,030,873

Keywords: mashed potato, mashed potato cakes, mashed potatoes, mashed potato cakes cooks country, cooks country, cook's country, potato cakes, how to make mashed potato cakes, how to make mashed potatoes, cooking, cooking tv show, cooking show, potatoes, potato

Id: znPSM6leMhY

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2019