In a Reddit post shared to r/Cooking, site user u/ilrasso shared that they “just made mashed potatoes using baked potatoes and it was the best [they] ever had.”
At first, I thought “well, each to their own, but that’s not for me.”
But having taken a gander at the comments, it seems chefs approve of the method.
″[I’m] a chef and you might as well have hit copy/paste on every comment I have ever made about mash,” a top comment from u/texnessa reads.
“This is how we make them in restaurants. Been preaching this gospel forever to home cooks.”
So how is it made, and why does it work?
The recipe is pretty simple
The poster put their potatoes in the oven at 200°C or 350°F for an hour.
Then, they simply scooped the insides out and whisked them “with hot milk and more butter than your diet would approve.”
After that, they added salt.
The chef had a slightly different approach, writing: “For extra credit, bake [the potatoes] on a bed of salt to help remove even more moisture, steep 50/50 heavy cream and milk with butter, bay, thyme, peppercorns and parsley stems for an hour or two and use that for your liquid. Banging.”
Nigella Lawson’s site advises people making mash from baked potatoes to keep the skins out of the mix, as these will be dry.
You’ll need more liquid to make your mash than you would otherwise, and because you lose moisture in the process, you may even need to use more spuds for the same amount of mash, they add.
It’s perfect for fans of potato skins
A commenter on the r/Cooking thread asked “is this why restaurants have potato skin appetisers?”
Another Redditor replied, “Yep. I make potato skins on Thanksgiving eve every year and put the mashed potatoes away in the fridge for the next day.”
“I’ve also made twice-baked potatoes this way. Just return the mash to their skins and cook in a hot oven,” another site user said.
I’m not drooling, you are…
