fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3616 ]

[ SECRET POST #3616 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3616 ⌋

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A bit late but, I'm curious:
How do you season mashed potatoes? "Traditional" recipes I found on the internet uses only salt and pepper and I thought it was a bit... bland as I'm used to add ground nutmeg, garlic or parsely depending on the mood. What about you?

Lots of coarse grated cheddar and salted butter. Maybe a little bit of chopped parsley or rosemary.

Just milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

But I really like the taste of potatoes, so.

Ya gotta pick the right variety of potato as well, I think. Maris Peer I find are particularly good, but a lot of others stick with the old King Edward or Desiree, which I find lends better to roasting or baked than mashed.

I don't know what any of those are. I just buy Idaho potatoes. I love 'em.

A spoonful of mayo, milk, salt, and pepper.

Vegetarian "chicken" broth. Which consists of salt, onion powder, garlic, pepper, nutritional yeast, thyme, bay leaf, and a pinch of dill.

Butter, milk, and salt and pepper to taste after that, of course, but the chicken stock thing has always been my secret weapon. People often tell me I make the best mashed potatoes they've ever had, and the secret has always been the chicken flavouring.

Of course, normal average chicken bouillon would also work, but I had to come up with something to substitute.

I'd swap out the dill for celery seed, myself. Also there's one brand that makes this stuff called "no chicken" broth that's really awesome. I'm pissed that my local grocery store only sells the low sodium version now, because it's not as convincing and doesn't taste as good, and the sad thing is, just salting the low sodium version doesn't make it taste the same. Betting there's more celery in the regular version. Dill seems like it would work better to cook potatoes for cold potato salad.

I've put celery salt in a few times, it's perfectly fine, but it's not a key flavour component. The key really is the dill, believe it or not. Not a bunch of it, just a pinch. I've tried probably ...six or seven permutations of the recipe trying to get it right (I came up with this on my own, rather than going to the internet to try to figure it out).

Taking everything else out of the equation, the absolute base ingredients to have it tasting properly "chickeny" are the onion, garlic, nutritional yeast, and dill. Everything else is optional, but they all add to the illusion in a pleasing way. I found out fairly recently that it's because dill is a common ingredient in processed chicken soup bases (think Lipton, Knorr), due to its traditional involvement in Jewish chicken soup bases.

So, tl;dr whether you're aware of it or not, dill is a flavour most of our brains have come to associate with chicken stock.

Re: thanksgiving food

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 22:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: thanksgiving food

herpymcderp - 2016-11-27 22:45 (UTC) - Expand

Potatoes taste great to me without much extras. Just lots of pepper.

First of all I would really recommend boiling the potatoes in their skins in heavily salted water. I mean HEAVILY, like 1/4 cup of salt. It dehydrates the potatoes and stops them from becoming water-logged, and when you drain them, they have this amazing salty crust on them and a really concentrated potato flavour:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/11/colombian-style-salt-crusted-new-potatoes-recipe.html

Then you can peel them or just mash them skins and all, and add some butter or olive oil. Black pepper is also good.

Huh. I find it really interesting that this is called "Colombian style" in this recipe, since I've seen identical recipes that call for new potatoes and are labelled "New England/Syracuse/New York" salt potatoes.

Butter, milk, and cheese in my house.

But then they pour gravy over it when it's served.

Mixed with horseradish sauce and grated wasabi.

I like them best traditional/plain- just half-and-half, butter, S&P. And they should be smooshed, but not creamy. Lumps are necessary.

There's nothing wrong with wanting other seasonings though. Roasted garlic paste swirled into them would be nice!

Either roast garlic and add that to the potatoes when you mash them, or add peeled cloves of garlic to the cooking water and mash them along with the potatoes. I added a bay leaf to the cooking water this year, but sometimes I will add chopped fresh rosemary with the butter and milk. And speaking of butter and milk, buttermilk or plain yogurt in place of some or all of the milk makes awesome mashed potatoes.

Lots of butter, and make sure the pepper is freshly ground.

Salted butter, garlic salt, a wee bit of milk (or cream), or sour cream, sharp cheddar, green onions or chives.

Salt, butter, pepper, and chives or garlic.

Lots of nutmeg. I love nutmeg. I also like to cook and mash some celeriac or parsley root along with the potatoes. Gives the whole thing a slightly different aroma.

I know people who add horseradish or wasabi but I'm not a fan of that.

Hmm, reading the other comments- is putting milk in the mashed potatoes common or uncommon in the US (or does it vary from state to state)? I think it's interesting reading about the regional differences.

I love spicy things so I totally support horseradish in my mashed potatoes, but I love them plain too. When making them for my family I tend to just put salt/pepper/butter in them because they're not super spicy loving people.

Re: thanksgiving food

fishnchips - 2016-11-28 23:18 (UTC) - Expand

Salt and pepper, though that other stuff sounds good! I don't eat mashed potatoes often though because people usually put waaaaaaaay too much butter in them.

I usually put milk, salt, pepper, Ranch Dressing and Cheddar cheese in it.

I've never heard of putting nutmeg in mashed potatoes. I love nutmeg, but I'm not sure if this sounds like a good thing or not. I just like a bit of butter flavor in my mashed potatoes. If you put gravy on the mashed potatoes, you don't need to season the potatoes. Concentrate on making the gravy good. We skip the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and have baked little figerling potatoes instead.

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