What’s your favourite model of mashed potato? After I make mashed potatoes at residence, I’m a fan of skin-on (aka, “soiled” mashed potatoes) — partly as a result of I like the feel, partly as a result of I don’t like peeling. However as for my favourite model of mashed potato, there’s no query: fancy-restaurant mashed potatoes. You realize what I imply — the type that come beside a filet of poached salmon or white asparagus that price greater than your cellular phone invoice. The super-creamy form that make you pause mid-bite and say, “How do they even do that?”
“Butter,” explains chef Matthew Ryle in his new cookbook, French Classics. “And plenty of it.” Plus, a couple of extra tips — like baking the potatoes, as an alternative of boiling them — to attain “really luxurious, restaurant-quality mash.” Right here, Matthew shares his recipe for pommes purée.
Pommes Purée
From French Classics: Straightforward and Elevated Dishes to Cook dinner at Dwelling, by Matthew Ryle
For the dry potato mash
6 giant potatoes, ideally Maris Piper or Yukon Gold
salt, ideally rock salt
To complete
1kg (4 cups firmly packed) dry potato mash (see above)
about 500g (4 sticks) butter
about 200ml (scant 1 cup) entire milk
advantageous sea salt
white pepper, freshly floor
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan (350°F for the standard oven, or 400°F for convection).
Prick your potatoes with a small knife; this can cease them from exploding within the oven. Place them on a baking tray on a mattress of rock salt (any salt will work, however low-cost rock salt works finest and you may re-use it subsequent time you’re making mash). Bake for 60 minutes, or till the potatoes are mushy.
Minimize the potatoes in half as soon as they’re out of the oven, so steam can escape. Scoop the cooked potato flesh out of the skins and cross it via a potato ricer.
Put the weighed dry potato mash in a medium saucepan over a medium-low warmth. Minimize half its weight of butter into small cubes and slowly add to the potato, stirring, utilizing splashes of the milk to cease the butter from splitting. Chances are you’ll not want all of the milk; you might be simply utilizing it to convey the mash to your required consistency and assist get that butter inside. Add advantageous salt and floor white pepper to style.
Non-obligatory: Cross the completed mash via a fine-meshed sieve. This closing stage will not be one hundred pc essential, however does assure superbly lump-free mash.
Thanks a lot, Matthew!
P.S. Extra potatoes, simply because we love them:
* the way to make English jacket potatoes
* a potato salad trick
* what’s the very best half snack of all time? this
* the proper crunchy roast potatoes
* 8 mashed potato mix-ins
* three strategic starters for a cocktail party
* social nervousness and the ability of potato chips
(Images by Patricia Niven. Excerpted from French Classics: Straightforward and Elevated Dishes to Cook dinner at Dwelling by Matthew Ryle, on sale now from Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Ryle. All rights reserved.)
