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These mashed potatoes are easy, cheesy, and delicious. This Cheesy Mashed Potato recipe is a luxurious take on the traditional mashed potato with a cheddar and cream cheese twist. If you are looking to kick your potato game up a level and want to make a rich, special side dish, these potatoes are for you. Check out this recipe and prepare to get cheesy!

Bowl of Cheesy Mashed Potatoes in a white bowl that is sitting on a platter and chopped chive sprinkled all over.

Cheesy Mashed Potato Summary

This recipe similar to the traditional mashed potato, but it is amped up with cheesy goodness. The big difference being here is that we are incorporating cream cheese and cheddar cheese into the recipe. Believe me, I love a good helping of traditional mashed potatoes, but this brings the side dish to a whole other level.

Instead of incorporating milk and butter after or during the mashing process, we make a cheese sauce mixture at the same time our potatoes are cooking. Once both elements are done, we combine them to make our final tasty side dish.

About the Cheese Sauce

Since most of the rest of the recipe is typical mashed potato fare, I think it is important to talk about the rest of the ingredients. For this recipe, we heat butter, add milk, cream cheese, and then finally grated cheddar cheese.

Making the sauce separately from the potatoes allows the sauce to stand on it’s own, even before we mix it with the potatoes. Additionally, as we covered in our Make Ahead Sous Vide Mashed Potatoes recipe, coolness is an enemy of any mashed potato recipe. 

Heating this all on the stove eliminates that problem by hearting up any elements that would be cold. The one thing to note about this is to make sure to stir your sauce when being heated. We don’t want our dairy products to scold on the stovetop.

A pan on a stovetop with cream cheese melting into it.
Melting cream cheese into butter and milk. Before cheddar cheese is mixed in.
Cheddar cheese that has not been melted, but is in a pot of the mixture that is being heated.
Folding cheddar cheese into our mixture. Allow this to melt and then remove from heat.

Why Is Cold Our Enemy?

The colder our milk, butter, and cheese is, the more it will cool off the potatoes. It is that simple. It is better to have nice, hot potatoes. Cold ingredients can result in a cooling effect that is not desirable.

Heating the sauce ingredients in the saucepan eliminates that problem. In a typical mashed potato recipe, I would suggest making sure your milk and butter are at room temperature before using them. Since we are heating this sauce, this should not be an issue for this recipe.

What Kind of Potato to Use?

Our recipe calls for Russet potatoes and there are a few reasons for that. First, they taste great for mashed potatoes and have the right consistency. They have the right starch content that can make for a great, fluffy potato. If you use other potatoes, like red potatoes, they may not have the right starch content and are more at risk of making that waxy, pasty potato. You don’t want that.

Second, they are economical! Everybody carries russet potatoes and they are easy to find. You may already have them in your kitchen or pantry.

Yukon Potatoes

If you want to get a little fancy, you could consider using half Yukon potatoes and half Russet. Yukon have a bit more flavor than Russet and still have a good starch content. Sometimes, I will do half and half or even just Yukon. 

Ricing Your Potatoes

Have you ever had mashed potatoes that were fine, but had a waxy, pasty texture? There can be a few things that contribute to this and one of them is overworking them. If you are using a hand blender or food processor, your potatoes are in danger!

I recommend purchasing a potato ricer [AFFILIATE LINK] for the best results. This is going to assure you will not get lumpy potatoes and you are going to end up with a product that is not over-processed. A hand masher also works great and I would recommend that over a hand blender or food processor any day.

Cut and Rinse the Potatoes!

Over mixing your potatoes is the main danger in over processing your potatoes, but starch management has a role, as well. We want starch in our potatoes, but not too much. Cutting our potatoes small enough and making sure to rinse them well will help wike away excess starch.

Cut potatoes in a colander before they have been cut.
This is about the size the potatoes should be.

Folding The Cheese Sauce and Taters

Once the cheese sauce is cooked and the potatoes have been riced (or mashed), mix them together. By gently folding the sauce into the potatoes, you can help control the final texture of your potatoes.

This is a fairly sturdy dish, but the sauce ingredients are fairly heavy and over whipping or mixing the final product could produce a mashed potato that has that undesirable pasty texture. Folding the sauce in and being a little delicate just helps to ensure the best final product possible.

Toppings and Garnish

Pictured, we added some butter and chives to top these potatoes, but there are some other great options to top these potatoes. The obvious choice is more cheese! 

We add quite a bit in the potatoes themselves and adding a sprinkling of grated cheese on top just increases the cheese love. Green onions would be a great choice. Also, bacon bits would be perfect for a recipe like this. It is already luxurious enough and adding some of those savory little bits to the mix would be a great addition.

Recipe Tips

  • Cool ingredients is one enemy of fluffy mashed potatoes. Make sure your cheese sauce is warm before mixing with this cheesy mashed potatoes recipe.
  • Rinse your potatoes well before cooking to wike away starch.
  • Use a potato ricer for best results, but a hand masher works well, as well
  • You could use other melty cheeses like swiss, mozzarella, or even provolone. 
A bowl of cheesy mashed potatoes in a white bowl that sits on a gold platter.

Products I Used In This Recipe

Did You Try These Cheesy Mashed Potatoes?

Awesome! If you liked these cheesy mashed potatoes, let me know in the comments section below. It is always helpful if you can leave me a message and rating. Of course, I would love for you to share this recipe on Pinterest and Facebook to help spread the word. These potatoes are tasty and there is no reason not to spread the love! Thanks for reading and don’t forget to sign up for recipe emails!

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Bowl of Cheesy Mashed Potatoes in a white bowl that is sitting on a platter and chopped chive sprinkled all over.

Cheesy Mashed Potatoes

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  • Author: Ben Myhre
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 30 minutes
  • Total Time: 40 minutes
  • Yield: 4 Servings 1x
  • Category: Side Dish
  • Method: Stovetop
  • Cuisine: American
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Description

Easy, cheesy, and delicious! This Cheesy Mashed Potato recipe is a wonderful side dish that has all the comfort of traditional mashed potatoes, but the rich flavors that cheese can bring. Give this tasty side dish a try!


Ingredients

Scale

  • 2 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1-inch
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1/2 cup whole milk
  • 2 ounces cream cheese
  • 4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded + 1 ounce to top and garnish
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • Chives, chopped for garnish (optional)
  • Bacon Bits (optional) 

Instructions

  1. Rinse potatoes well to remove starch and then add to large pot of salted, lightly boiling water
  2. Cook over medium until tender
  3. While the potatoes are cooking, melt the butter in a saucepan on medium-low
  4. Add milk to butter and stir. Heat until warm.
  5. Add cream cheese and stir until melted in and hot.
  6. Add cheddar and stir until melted in and hot.
  7. Remove from heat once all is melted
  8. Once potatoes are tender, remove and rice or mash into a large bowl
  9. Fold sauce into potatoes.
  10. Garnish, and serve 

Notes

  • Cool ingredients is one enemy of fluffy mashed potatoes. Make sure your cheese sauce is warm before mixing with the potatoes.
  • Rinse your potatoes well before cooking to wike away starch.
  • Use a potato ricer for best results, but a hand masher works well, as well
  • You could use other melty cheeses like swiss, mozzarella, or even provolone.

Nutrition

  • Serving Size: 1/4 Dish
  • Calories: 429
  • Sugar: 4 g
  • Sodium: 581 mg
  • Fat: 23 g
  • Saturated Fat: 14 g
  • Unsaturated Fat: 9 g
  • Fiber: 3 g
  • Protein: 15 g
  • Cholesterol: 43 g

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1 Comment

  1. These are outstanding! So happy to add them to my mashed potato repertoire. Thanks for sharing such a luscious recipe.