I want to make the best tasting pic related that I can but there seems lika a lot of variety in the use of...

I usually do 1 tbsp of butter for every medium potato. Add milk to your preference, I like mashed potatoes thicker but some people like them thinner. Add a little bit of salt at a time and keep tasting until it's right, salt is a big part of making them taste good. Also I didn't have access to a peeler recently and just boiled the potatoes whole with the skin on and it seems like the mashed potatoes were more flavorful. Still peeled them after but they had a more earthy taste and stronger potato flavor.

For best mash, do not boil. Variety doesn't matter too much if you're not boiling so long as you cook them properly.
If using waxy potatoes, steam them (do not boil). All rounders are also best steamed.
If using floury potatoes, bake them (again: do not boil).

Added dairy should be room temperature. Which dairy to add will vary according to which potato type you use. Waxy potatoes benefit from use of cooking cream and no other dairy. No butter. No milk. Just cooking cream. When they're done steaming, but them in a bowl with the cooking cream and mash it together. I don't know the science behind it, but adding butter and milk to waxy potatoes yields an unexpectedly inferior mash compared to one made using cooking cream. Cooking cream is 45% fat. If you can't find it where you live, stick to floury potatoes.
Floury potatoes, especially if baked rather than boiled, are able to absorb more moisture and turn fluffy, so use milk here and, for added fat, butter.
If you want to keep the skin on, waxy potatoes are better to use than floury as floury potatoes tend to have a thicker skin many people find unpleasant to come across when eating mash. If you or your guests enjoy the thicker skin, but all means, leave it on.

My go-to mash is garlic and parsley.
900ish g peeled, waxy potatoes and 9ish cloves of garlic steamed and mashed with 250g of cooking cream with lots of parsley added. Salt to taste.
Another favourite is pepper, oregano, olive oil and onion. This is a bit different because the mash has no dairy, all the ingredients are "stewed" (google translates the word that way, but that's not quite right) together, then mashed in the pot without draining. It's difficult to do because you need the exact right amount of each ingredient or the mash will be either undercooked or turn mushy. Since this has no dairy at all, it's suitable for women and faggots IE vegans. Ever noticed all vegans are women and faggots?

>steam potato
Not all of us have industrial 12000 money steamers shitlord

Went to a Jew wedding a few years ago and the reception had kosher fillet steak with truffled mashed potato. Since Jews can't into meat+dairy, I asked how the potatoes were made since they were so fucking good.
"Onions caramelised in chicken grease."
Instead of butter, those crazy Jews whipped the mash with chicken fat and caramelised onion. Fucking delicious. Which made me think that duck fat mashed potato would probably be phe-fucking-nominal.
If you're looking for something a bit off the beaten track, look into chicken grease mash or duck fat mash, 4srs.

Do you have a pot? Can you get a few disposable pie plates from the dollar store? Then congrats, my indigent amigo, you too can have a steamer.

A microwave??

Russets peeled and cubed. Do not overboil. Drain. Return to pot. Add some butter and some half-and-half and some salt and pepper and DILL WEED. I use a hand masher, the kind with a wavy tool end. Mash away. Then cover pot with a clean dishtowel and a lid until you're ready to serve.

2:1 potato to butter. Rubochoun says so.
Also, you have to know how emulsification works.

No
Micerwave for baking potato

Well now, my financially fallow friend, what about a pot large enough to hold a colander in it? Or a colander small enough to fit in a pot?

Salt, nigga. A pinch of salt PER potato. Mash them by hand, the hard work adds flavour. Add a tsp of butter per potato. Use milk or cream, I found cream adds a better taste, but milk makes the potatoes creamier.

Fresh Kennebec spuds boiled in fresh unsalted water, decent chunk of butter, dash of milk and a teaspoon or so of nutritional yeast to taste.

All you need.

>fresh unsalted water
The fuck? Does your potatoes come seasoned?

No, they come as potatoes.

You don't need salt in it.

>he doesn't season his food

This is white people to the extreme

good meme

Of course because your disgusting nutritional yeast is salty enough, fucksack.

Dude. First, let me ask you a specific question: Do you want your mashed potatoes as a focal point, ir as a side to something else that is the focal point? This is an important consideration.

>This is an important consideration.
T. Liberal Arts drop out who won't say that he has dropped out but instead tells people he's "taking time off to find himself"

Potatoes
Sour cream
Milk
roasted garlic
salt, pepper, and a small amount of parsley

you could start of with why it matters instead of even bothering asking the question

What year do you think this is? 1998? Get off the internet, grandpa. Liberal arts and finding yourself died with Freddie Prinze Jrs career.

Don't listen to this swine, roasted garlic in mashed potatoes is fucking god tier.

fyi
If you have skin on/chunky mashed potatoes then you are making potato salad and not mashed potatoes.

It's seasoned with butter and nutritional yeast.

Salt is for plebs who can't handle real food flavours and has to have everything taste like processed food.

>It's seasoned with butter and nutritional yeast.
That's flavoring you newb.
Seasoning is only done with salt. Flavoring is done with ingredients.

I don't know what is whiter, not seasoning your food or using nutritional yeast to do it

An before someone corrects me, yes you can season with acid, but you specify which acid.
examples.
"Season that to taste" aka add salt
"Season that with vinegar" exactly what it means

the trick is just shitloads of butter and salt

>boils potatoes in plastic wrap
He’s retarded?

;P

Creme Cheese. Use as much as you want. Pro-tip herb and butter creme cheese. If you don't know to add a bit of milk or creme to your mash then you're retarded. Salt and pepper is another obvious.

>starchy potatoes for mash
>contrarian
am I being memed?

This right here my man

What about pepper?

only person in the thread to mention gods gift to mashed potatoes

>SOUR CREAM

thats the secret boys and girls, sour cream and butter and lots of it

You're going to mash the potatoes anyway, salting the water is just going to take more salt than what you'd need to season them after boiling. I can understand salting the water if you weren't going to mash them so it gets inside though.

I've never boiled a vegetable in unsalted water.

Why bother typing out a whole post with different recipes if OP doesn't know what he wants anyway? You enjoy working for nothing, fag?

There you go, you won't like unsalted water because it's foreign.

>boil chunks of russets, SKIN ON
>drain water
>pour in a good amount of Tony Chachere's "More Spice" or "Bold" seasoning
>scrape some bacon fat out from the ceramic container you keep in the fridge that collects bacon drippings
>1/2 to a whole stick of butter depending on amount of potatoes
>half and half or heavy cream and mix hard until not smooth, but paste-ish
>lots of freshly ground black pepper and salt

It's not hard. You're talking about potatoes + fat + cream + salt + spices. Mix all to your taste.

If you remove the skin, your bully was right.

A fat man told me he was going to go home and slap his wife when he tasted my taters made roughly from these steps. I highly recommend it.

parmesan cheese and and egg yolk in your mashed potatoes in addition to the butter and milk/cream is the bomb

I won't like unsalted water because I like seasoned food, whitey.

>I won't like unsalted food because I'm a processed food pleb

ftfy

I'm not sure if I should reply to you given your blatant racism, but you've missed the point entirely. In this case, the food that was boiling is being removed from the water and mashed. Because of this, it's more efficient to add salt at this stage, as the mashing process allows you to incorporate the seasoning throughout the food. This might be difficult to grasp at first if you're typically limited to communicating with other melanin-enriched individuals, but if you're an exception of your race, you'll understand exactly why we're not salting the water in this case.

>have no idea what goes on when boiling veg in salted water.

Surface season your shit, I bet you wait until after the steak is cooked to add salt too, don't you pleb?

You must be confused. Last time I checked, I didn't have the opportunity to incorporate salt throughout the fibers of the steak's meat after initial cooking via means of mashing and mixing together.

Mixing and mashing does nothing that is done while boiling, stupid.

Well, I'll go ahead and give you this last reply so you don't think I've abandoned your struggle. I'm not sure where you've gotten these views from, but I do hope that as you get a bit older, you'll see that salting potatoes in the boiling stage that are to be mashed is a bit inefficient. It's not "bad", but you seem to believe that it's optimal, which is patently false. I'm willing to provide you some research material if you're willing to learn, but otherwise, this will be my last attempt to entertain you.

>that are to be mashed is a bit inefficient.
Actually, salted water boils hotter than unsalted.

Boiling point of water is raised by one degree for each 60 grams of salt per liter. I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but I'd imagine it's not quite what you think you're saying given the extremes it takes to make this change significant in relation to potatoes being boiled with the intention of mashing.

>Boiling point of water is raised by one degree
Thus more efficient hotter and faster boil and thus more efficient cooking.

o lol ur so right, glad u took all things into consideration with this post

>o lol ur so right
That telltale sign of assblastednes.

skin on,boil WHOLE

>Deb
>heat water and milk
>add butter
>stir till thick
>add salt

wa rah

Do you add watermelon essence and KFC spice?

>Getting this mad over a throwaway joke about not seasoning food

Dill is truly an underrated herb

As for potatoes, adding CREAM CHEESE along with butter and salt+pepper will make them so creamy and good.
Other anons mentioned he keys of leaving the skins on and not over-mashing them.
Also, you can try to mix in saurkraut, which I love but is definitely a preference thing.

Just plenty of butter, thyme and roasted garlic. You season by boiling in salted water.

I use like a stick of butter, I mash the potatoes before I eyeball the amount of whole milk to add. I use sour cream or cream cheese as well. I shred about a quarter pound of good, strong cheese (aged Gouda, reggiano, or bandaged wrapped cheddar). Put it all in a casserole dish, top with crushed corn flakes and grate some more cheese then bake, then broil off the top. Plain mashed potatoes suck ass.

>chicken stock

Here is the real trick.

2.5 lbs of butter to 5 lbs of potatoes?

yes.
saveur.com/article/Recipes/Potato-Puree-1000070040

Yukon golds are the ultimate mashed potatoes. You don't even peel them, so you getting all the fiber, vitamins, and minerals from the skins too. Roasting some garlic and mashing in a few cloves brings them up to god-tier. Lacking Yukons, redskins are your second-best mashed potato. Russets and Idahos are only suitable for twice-baked potatoes.

I just put a a pound or two of sour cream depending on how many pounds of potatoes I made along with butter and salt. You can put pepper and garlic if you like that sort of thing.

pick the right variety of spud

I go with Maris Pipers.

Make sure all the spuds are roughly the same size. Place in cold water and bring to a boil then turn down the heat until the water is at a low boil so that they dont get beat up too much.

Once you can put a fork through them easily, remove from the heat and strain the water off.

Leave them to air dry. Do not start mashing when they are wet cause you will end up with mush.

Once they are nice and dry start mashing with a fork. Add in butter. You really dont need that much.

Add small amount of whole milk until you get the consistency that you like.

Salt to taste.

Lot of butter, lot of sour cream, lot of salt, a little bit of pepper. Use a food mill or a ricer instead of a masher or a mixer. Use RED potatoes, not yellow. Yellow potatoes turn gummy, red potatoes turn fluffy. If they come out too dry, add a little bit of milk or heavy cream and mix them up a bit more.

>comfy taters
Even though this may have been said... Use a non waxy potato and use a steamer. Then use a ricer to mash the potato this will make it fluffy. Them add cream and butter, S&P.