9 Pro-Approved Mashed Potato Tips for Stepping Up Your Spud Game

Elevate the crowd-pleasing Thanksgiving side from good to great.

Mashed potatoes—that classic combo of potatoes, milk or cream, butter, salt, and pepper—are a Thanksgiving mainstay. While simple enough to prepare, we discovered ways to upgrade mashed potatoes, making them even silkier, creamier, and more delicious. 

Keep reading for some of our favorite expert tips, and prepare to elevate your mashed potato game from good to great. Before you know it, guests will be asking for your mashed potato secrets.

Go for the Gold

Not all potatoes are created equal. Our go-to for mash is the Yukon Gold, which shines in this Creamy One-Pot Mashed Potatoes recipe. They have a naturally buttery flavor and a medium starch level, resulting in an extra creamy, never-mealy texture. With thin, light-colored skins, Yukon Golds are the best option for any dish where you’re leaving potatoes unpeeled.

To Peel or Not to Peel

Peeling potatoes is a time-consuming step in the mashed potato process. If you’re going to do it, get as many hands on deck as you have vegetable peelers and start peeling, leaving the bare potatoes in a pot of cold water to prevent oxidation.

If you're peeling-averse, you're in good company. “Peeling is overrated,” declared cookbook author Julia Turshen, and we agree! Sure, if you’re looking for the smoothest, fluffiest mash, peel your potatoes completely, but if you don’t mind a rustic style, there’s no need to waste precious prep time peeling.

Boil in Broth

Boiling potatoes in broth—instead of or with water—along with a pinch of sea salt or Himalayan sea salt gives them a richer, more complex flavor that's well short of tasting like soup. Whether it's chicken, turkey, beef, or vegetable broth, this tactic locks the broth's salty-savory flavor into plain spuds, before you add even more flavor.

Invest in a Ricer

If you make mashed potatoes with some regularity, it’s worth buying a potato ricer. They’re affordable and make mashing potatoes a breeze.

Pressing hot potatoes through the ricer—like Martha Stewart does in her Mashed Potatoes and Herbs recipe—processes them gently as opposed to aggressively mashing them yourself. That gentleness results in fluffier potatoes because you're not releasing as much starch. Starchy mash equals gluey mash!

Infuse the Dairy

For a sophisticated touch, try adding a hearty herb or two—like a sprig of rosemary and a bay leaf—to the milk-and-butter mixture as you’re heating it. Just remember to discard the herbs before you add that infused mixture to the potatoes, so the herbs don’t affect the mash's fluffy texture. For a detailed how-to, take a look at this Herb-Scented Mashed Potatoes recipe from Food & Wine.

Experiment with Cheese

Cheese is one of our favorite ways to play with mashed potatoes, especially with so many varieties to choose from. Gruyère provides a nice nuttiness, cheddar—a key component of our Cheddar Mashed Potatoes recipe—adds sharpness, while mascarpone lends a luxuriously creamy texture, like in our Creamy Mascarpone Mashed Potatoes recipe. You can even use blue cheese to add unexpected funkiness.

Roast Some Garlic

Garlic is a natural choice to pair with potatoes, but have you tried them with roasted garlic? Kale Me Maybe food and recipe blogger Carina Wolff loves roasted garlic in her mashed potatoes. She says it adds “a nice, rich flavor” as well as “a little sweetness” to spuds.

Wrapped in foil and roasted in olive oil, garlic turns soft and goes from spicy to sweet. We like folding it into room-temperature butter before adding it to hot mash—as called for in our Roasted-Garlic Butter recipe—or you can squeeze roasted garlic straight into the pot. Either way, you get the same rich, sweet, garlicky result. 

When in Doubt, Add More Butter

Let’s be honest: Butter is the basis of the most delicious, luscious mashed potatoes. Peeled or unpeeled, toppings or no toppings, mashed potatoes are at their best with a generous slab of butter.

“When you think there’s enough butter, add more,” Turshen urges. We consider those words to live by, especially when whipping up a bowl of decadent mashed potatoes.

Finish with Fresh Herbs

As a final flourish, sprinkle mashed potatoes with finely chopped fresh herbs. They liven things up and look beautiful against a creamy white background. Chives are a classic finishing touch—as on our Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes recipe—but we also like thyme, parsley, oregano, and sage. Mix and match for your ideal herby mashed potatoes.

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