![]() ![]() The airiest batch with the best flavor hailed from the food mill, which came with its own pros and cons. So, What Happened?Įach of the ricer, food mill, and tamis produced mashed potatoes with significantly different textures. In theory, all three contraptions should separate the boiled potatoes' cells more gently than anything from a stand mixer to a tool fit with a blade, and more consistently than something like a hand masher. Especially soft foods can be pressed through the fine holes of a tamis using a dough scraper. "It dates to around the Middle Ages, and it's been used in professional kitchens pretty much since," reports the Los Angeles Times. The tamis is a round, drum-shaped utensil with a flat mesh bottom. ![]() Photo by Ella Quittner Why They Should-or Shouldn't-Work:Ī potato ricer, first patented in 1909, is essentially a large clamp with which one may extrude a boiled potato through tiny holes.įood mills-developed around the same time by the Foley Manufacturing Company-force soft foods with the turn of a crank through a sieve-like bottom layer that catches any seeds or pulp too chunky to make it through. But it'd have been impossible to arrive at a perfectly silky batch with a pleasant texture using a hand masher, because one would inadvertently mash the same cells too many times (glue! glue! glue!) while seeking out unseparated ones. And the lack of brutal (sharp or mighty) cell separation made for a fairly fluffy batch. Wielding the implement by hand-versus a stand mixer fitted with a paddle-did facilitate more textural fine-tuning. Hand-mashed potatoes are a lump lover's dream. "The gooeyness develops when you break open the cooked potato cells and literally beat the starch out of them," McGee wrote in 2008, in response to a New York Times reader inquiry.Ī hand potato masher should allow its user to separate the potatoes' cells-not as gently as, say, a ricer, but more gently than something fitted with a blade for slicing, or a paddle for bashing-and offers control over the intensity of cell separation and aggregate mashing relative to a motorized machine. The key to keeping mashed potatoes from going the way of glue is to separate their cells, while taking care to slash as few as possible. Photo by Ella Quittner Why It Should-or Shouldn't-Work: ![]() When it came time to mash, each test group would receive (per pound of potatoes): three tablespoons of melted butter, first-based on Miglore's findings-then a quarter cup of warmed cream and a half teaspoon of kosher salt. Once rinsed a second time, the potato pieces would return to a pot on the stovetop, where they'd be nudged around gently over a low flame to eliminate excess water. So to minimize excess starch, all potatoes-except the baked batch-would be peeled, quartered, and rinsed once before their cook method and once before their mash test.Īfter its initial rinse, each batch of peeled potato quarters (excluding the Instant Pot group, the Jeffrey Steingarten bunch, and that pesky baked one) would make its way into a large pot of cold, heavily salted water-one tablespoon kosher salt per quart of water-and cooked until tender all the way through. "Rinsing the boiled potatoes of excess starch both before and after cooking was the key," found López-Alt when, in 2010, he engineered the fluffiest possible spuds. Waxy potatoes require more mashing to obtain a smooth texture, exude more gelated starch, and don’t absorb enrichment as easily." Sold: All tests would feature Russet potatoes of a similar size. "Mealy types fall apart into individual cells and small aggregates," writes food scientist Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, referring to Russets and the like, "so they offer a large surface area for coating by the added ingredients, and readily produce a fine, creamy consistency. I haven't had contact with a human since. Which would yield a batch so fluffy one could use it as a pillow on the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner? Is a side dish of creamy whipped potatoes without a trace of gumminess a myth?Īnd before you say that spending an entire day straight obsessively poking, peeling, and mashing potatoes sounds somewhat unhinged, well-actually, you're correct. So with the findings of all the potato pundits before me in hand, I set out to pit 11 cooking and mashing methods against one another. ![]() A few years later, Food52's own Sarah Jampel took to the lab (kitchen counter) to put a handful of masher-less mashing techniques to the test, and our Resident Genius, Kristen Miglore, scouted a clever trick for richer flavor: add the butter before the heavy cream.īut the absolute best way to mash a potato? Out of every single way? I had to know for myself. His findings? It all boils down to the starch. Kenji López-Alt over at Serious Eats broke down the science behind velvety purées, versus fleecier mounds. ![]()
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