How To Mash The Potatoes

In every mashed potato recipe come a time when you have to mash the potatoes. The moment comes somewhere between cooking and eating them :). Right. Apart from this obvious fact, what do you need to know about mashing the potatoes? There are a few techniques and tools that give a bit different results. They influence the texture of the mashed potatoes. Three most commonly used tools are wire masher, potato ricer and electric mixer.

Wire Masher

Wire masher is the most common tool for making mashed potatoes. You use your hand power to squash and mash the potatoes and the more you work them, the smoother the potatoes will be.

Potato Ricer

Potato ricer looks like and oversized garlic press. Potato ricer mashes the potatoes by forcing them through small holes on the bottom. These holes are often not much larger than a grain of rice. There are a few different types of potato ricers. The most basic potato ricer consists of a grid on a handle. You pres the grid against a flat surface (like the bottom of the pan) and put the potato in between. The second type is the before mentioned – one that looks like a giant garlic press. And the last and most “evolved” is called a food mill. Potatoes (or other food) are driven toward the grid by a large screw, kind of like with the meat grinder. I guess this is to complicated for a simple mashed potato recipe. So if you are using potato ricer use the second one – the one that looks like garlic press.

Potato ricer makes mashed potatoes smoother that wire masher. And finally…

Electric mixer

I won’t be explaining what an electric mixer is (duh), but I will tell you what potato mixer does. First it makes mashed potatoes really really smooth and secondly it also makes them lighter, fluffier by mixing air into the mashed potatoes.

These were the basic tools for making mashed potatoes, you need one of them with every mashed potato recipe. Maybe one more thing – if you are more of a nature man, camping out or if you simply do not have any of the tools above – a simple fork will do as well. You will have to work harder for worse result but if you have no other option you can mash your potatoes with a fork.