The Mashed Potato Debate

I grew up with boxed mashed potatoes. We rarely, if ever, had the homemade kind. I still like them but I agree with my husband that the real ones taste better. However, I still like them really creamy and smooth instead of chunky and he prefers the chunks. There are many "secrets" online as to how to make the potatoes smoother and the only thing I can agree with is to use Yukon Gold potatoes instead of Russet. Too bad for me because we only have Russet in the house right now and I was planning on making mashed potatoes with dinner. Of course my husband is nice enough to eat anything I make regardless of lumps or smoothness but I wish there was a better way to get the potatoes more my way with the Russet.

It probably doesn't help that we don't have that great of a potato masher. For one thing, it's plastic. It has these little circle holes in it that the potatoes then ooze through and then we get potato worms instead of just potatoes. It drives me crazy and I don't think David has ever even noticed. They make some really nice metal ones with double the amount of those metal lines that mash to help them mash even better but I don't know if it's worth the 30 dollars when I believe ours was found at the dollar store.

I think our favorite way to eat mashed potatoes though, is to make our recipe of Mush. We named it (and came up with it) all on our own and it's called mush because that's what it looks like. You mix tvp (or ground beef or ground turkey or whatever you want for meat) into your potatoes and then you add vegetables. We usually do peas and corn but I think carrots would work out too. As a little kid, you always smush your vegetables into your mashed potatoes anyway (I think my older sister taught me that) so now, the chef does it for you! I have also thought it might be good with gravy but I've never tried it. I'm not usually a big fan of it but lately it's been sounding better and better. If you make a mushroom gravy instead of a beef one, it's just one more way to get more vegetables on your plate! Win-win!