Best Mashed Potatoes With No Lumps

If you want to make the Best Mashed Potatoes, look no further. This recipe will deliver a bowl of creamy, fluffy, and perfect mashed potatoes. 

The ingredients are important for this potato recipe, but so is the equipment. I walk you through this tasty potato recipe step-by-step, so you can end up with a bowl of wonderfully creamy, simple mashed potatoes.

🧈 What makes this recipe special?

What is Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter without a big serving of mashed potatoes? Why not serve the best mashed potatoes you can? This is a basic mashed potato recipe that gives you a perfect side dish that everybody will love. 

These mashed potatoes have no lumps, are as creamy as they come, and are ready to help make your holiday meal the best ever. Of course, sometimes a person might just want mashed potatoes for a regular dinner. This is easy and quick enough for that, too.

My goal for this is to get you the best, basic mashed potato recipe possible. The ingredients, method, and equipment below will help you make a great batch of mashed potatoes.

These potatoes will be a great side dish for our Sous Vide Prime Rib recipe, this Spicy Italian Meatloaf recipe, Homemade Salisbury Steak With Mushroom Gravy, or a delicious Grilled Steak. No matter what you make, make sure to treat yourself. 

🥔 Ingredients

The obvious one is potatoes. There isn’t much to this recipe, but there are a few other ingredients that pull this recipe together. Here is what you will need:

• Russet potatoes
• Whole milk
• Butter
• Salt & Black Pepper

See the recipe card for quantities.

Types of potatoes

I use russet potatoes because they are widely available, reasonably priced, and work especially well for mashing. Yukon Gold potatoes are another kind of potato that works great for mashed potatoes.

Really, you can use any potato, but you are going to get different results. Some potatoes, like red potatoes, will give you a waxier, less fluffy texture.

Russets really are the best potatoes for this, but sometimes I use Yukon Gold potatoes.

Amount of potatoes

I estimate about ½ pound of peeled potatoes per serving. This is the weight after the skins have been removed. 

Dairy

I use whole milk, but you can really use anything from skim milk to heavy cream. This, however, will impact your end product. 

The richer your dairy is, the richer your final product. Whole milk is perfect for this use.

🍲 Instructions

This is one of those recipes where the ingredients are few, but how you handle them makes a big difference in the outcome. Nothing is hard, but a few simple steps can ensure creamy mashed potatoes with no lumps.

An essential step to making great mashed potatoes is to gently warm the milk and butter before combining them with the potatoes. Warm dairy incorporates easily and helps keep the potatoes hot. 

Cold butter and milk can cool down your potatoes and make the butter slower to melt and incorporate. 

Another essential step to making great mashed potatoes is rinsing and soaking your potatoes. The goal is to help rinse away some of the surface starch.

Excess surface starch can contribute to gummy or gluey mashed potatoes. This can be avoided by soaking uncooked potatoes and thoroughly rinsing them before adding them to the boiling water.

Finally, let’s talk lumps. Use a potato ricer or food mill to get smooth mashed potatoes without any lumps. It is that easy.

While they are an extra piece of equipment to have around, they work great for making lumpless mashed potatoes. I also use mine when I make lefse, so I get plenty of use out of mine.

By gently warming the dairy, appropriately rinsing the correct type of potatoes, and using a potato ricer, you will end up with the best mashed potatoes with no lumps.

What NOT to do

Don’t use a food processor, immersion blender, or electric mixer to mash your potatoes. These tools can overwork the potatoes and give them a waxy, plastic-looking appearance and gluey consistency. If you don’t use the ricer I recommend, use a potato masher instead.

🤷 Substitutions and variations

There are a few ways that this can be changed up.

• Type of potato – I use russet potatoes, but Yukon Gold potatoes also work well.
• Milk – I use whole milk, but 2%, skim milk, or heavy cream can also be used with varying results. Whole milk is the best. For a tangier, richer variation, replace part of the milk with sour cream.
• Skins – Do you like potato skins? This recipe can be made with the skins on, but do not use a potato ricer; use a hand masher instead. The skins will clog up the potato ricer and make it impossible to use.
• Lumpy potatoes – This recipe can be made with a few lumps. Just don’t use a potato ricer; use a hand masher instead.
• Garlic – Want to add some garlic flavor to your potatoes? Add 4 or 5 peeled garlic cloves to the water when you boil your potatoes. They will soften up and go through the ricer. The garlic will mix right in.

📦 Short and long-term storage

The easiest way to keep potatoes warm is to put a cover on the dish. If you don’t have a cover, a piece of aluminum foil will do the trick.

You could also put them into a slow cooker. Transfer the mashed potatoes to a slow cooker set to the “warm” setting. Stir occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the sides or drying out, and keep hot food at 140°F or above.

If you specifically need potatoes you can prepare ahead for a holiday or gathering, try my Make-Ahead Sous Vide Mashed Potatoes.

Mashed potatoes can be stored in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days or frozen for longer-term storage. To refrigerate mashed potatoes, transfer them to shallow, airtight containers and refrigerate within two hours of cooking. 

When reheating refrigerated mashed potatoes, heat them to 165°F and add a bit of extra milk or butter to restore their creaminess.

To freeze mashed potatoes, transfer them to a freezer-safe container and freeze for up to 2-3 months. When reheating, thaw the mashed potatoes overnight in the refrigerator, then reheat them to 165°F on the stove or in the microwave with a bit of extra milk or butter to restore their creaminess.

Note that mashed potatoes may have a slightly different texture after being refrigerated or frozen and reheated. They may become a bit drier or grainier, but they should still be safe to eat as long as they were stored properly and reheated to 165°F.

🎓 History Tidbit

Potatoes were domesticated by Indigenous farmers in the Andes near modern Peru and Bolivia thousands of years before the Inca Empire, with evidence of domestication going back roughly 8,000 years. 

The Spanish brought potatoes back to Europe in the 16th century, but adoption was gradual and the crop sometimes met resistance before becoming an important part of European agriculture and cuisine. One of the earliest known printed recipes for mashed potatoes appeared in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy in 1747. Her recipe called for boiled potatoes mashed with milk, butter, and salt.

Potatoes reached English North America well before the 19th century, with references to potatoes in Virginia in the 1620s and the well-known planting by Scotch-Irish settlers in New Hampshire in 1719. Mashed potatoes eventually became a popular side dish in American cuisine and are now a familiar part of traditional holiday meals, especially Thanksgiving.

❓ FAQ

📝 Tips and tricks

• Use russet potatoes.
• Make sure you rinse and soak the potatoes.
• Do NOT use a food processor, immersion blender, or electric mixer to mash potatoes.
• It is important to use warm milk and butter. If you are in a hurry, gently warm them in the microwave in short 20- to 30-second intervals at a low or medium power setting, stirring or checking between intervals, just until warm.
• Add more salt and pepper if desired.

🛠 Products used in this recipe

• Potato Ricer
• Hand Masher
• Large Colander

😋 Did you make this recipe?

That is awesome, and thank you so much for giving our Best Mashed Potatoes recipe a try. If you could leave a rating in the comment area below, it would be greatly appreciated. This lets me know how I am doing and also helps others decide if they want to make this recipe. Most of all, thanks for visiting Ramshackle Pantry.