Deep-Fried Mashed Potato & Gravy Balls Land at KFC Australia

Abbey White
Updated

In today's edition of "Why do other countries always get more interesting new fast food items," KFC Australia has introduced a snack called "Gravy Mashies"—deep-fried mashed potato balls with a dollop of KFC gravy in the center. If you've ever dreamed of being able to hold bite-size morsels of KFC mashed potatoes and gravy in your hands, this is about as close as you can get without having to lick a mashed potato mess off your fingers.

Though this new item may sound amazing to Americans who have never had Mashies before, for Australians, the path to Gravy Mashies has actually been a long and arduous journey. Mashies—albeit without their new gravy center—had been a cult favorite on the KFC Australia menu, but the limited-time-only item was removed from restaurant eight years ago. In the aftermath, fans of these fried potato balls pleaded with KFC to bring them back via the standard avenues such as a "Bring Back KFC Mashies" Facebook group. Then, in 2015, KFC Australia teased fans by trying out the new Gravy Mashies exclusively on the island state of Tasmania, selling more than 130,000 of the test item in less than two weeks according to a KFC spokesperson.

But this time around, KFC Australia isn't handling its balls lightly: the new, gravy-accentuated Gravy Mashies are getting a rollout into 600 locations across the country. "Our fans have spoken, and we had to listen," KFC marketing director Angela Richards said, according to The West Australian. "There were thousands of comments on our social post with people outside of Tassie begging for them and asking when they were going to get them. When you have fans that are this passionate, you have to give them what they want." Though, despite this effort to appease fans, KFC says that, once again, Gravy Mashies will only be around for a limited time.

As for the balls themselves, in an expectedly innuendo-filled review, YouTuber Greg Hadley of the channel Greg's Kitchen rated the flavor of the "Colonel's balls" as a 7.2 out of 10, complimenting them on their lack of greasiness but also pointing out the missed opportunity that the crust just tasted like fried potato and didn't take advantage of any of KFC's signature herbs and spices. For KFC Australia's next LTO, maybe Spicy Gravy Mashies should be considered.