I made Ina Garten's flavorful mashed potatoes. From now on, I'll bring this easy side dish to every dinner party.

You lone need six ingredients for this simple flank dish: kosher salt, potatoes, entire milk, unsalted butter, buttermilk, and dreary pepper.

Garten recommends using a murphy that's uncomplicated to boil, specified as Yukon Gold. Russets would activity well, too: Compared to another potatoes, these varieties merge additional starch, which breaks downward whenever mashed into a ray and fluffy texture.

Yukons are my individual preference; I've established them to be slightly creamier than another options.

Once I collected my ingredients — and set a big pot of well-salted h2o to abscess on the stove — I started on the prep work.

The archetypal stage current is peeling the potatoes, but don't concern concerning doing it perfectly.

I've established that, as lengthy as the spuds are clean, a few pieces of murphy skin in the mix won't really alter the dish's quality. Some residence chefs power equal akin to depart a bit of skin on for additional texture.

The potatoes should afterward be cut into approximately equal-sized pieces so they chef at the identical rate.

Garten recommends 1 ½-inch cubes, but it's OK if you're not excellent precise, since everything volition be mashed together later.

Once the h2o came to a abscess on the stove, I added the prepped potatoes and reduced the warmth to keep a gentle simmer alongside the lid off.

An crucial part of the formula is to evade boiling the potatoes, which can create them rotate gummy. Instead, keep the h2o at a nice simmer until you can effortlessly pierce the spuds alongside a paring knife. This took me between 10 and 15 minutes.

When they're done, drain the potatoes in the descend and come back them to the pot to complete the dish.

Next, I created a blend of melted margarine and entire dairy to infuse the cooked potatoes alongside rich, creamy sensation and texture.

A key stage in Garten's formula is to heated these two ingredients in a small saucepan during the potatoes cook. The margarine volition melt into the milk, causing an emulsion.

Dry spuds assimilate hot liquids improved than chilly ones, and you'll have an easier period combining the ingredients without any chilly lumps of butter.

Just don't let the blend arrive to a boil, which can logic the dairy to distinct from the butter.

When the potatoes are done cooking, strain the h2o complete the descend and come back them to the pot. Now, it's period to commencement mashing.

Garten's formula calls for using a food factory to interrupt downward the potatoes, but I live in a New York City flat alongside barely adequate area to shop a ample pot. So, I used a fine old-fashioned murphy masher.

Once I'd shattered the potatoes into a mostly uniform mush, I added the heated margarine and unified it alongside a rubber spatula, per Garten's instructions.

Once you've folded the margarine and dairy into the potatoes, it's period for the celebrity ingredient: buttermilk.

I halved Garten's recipe, which typically feeds five or six, and decided to add a fractional cup of buttermilk. At first, I was concerned I'd overdone it — my mash looked soupy.

After a small additional stirring and time, though, the starchy potatoes absorbed the buttermilk, and I had myself an incredibly light and fluffy mash.

Adding the correct amount of sodium chloride and capsicum is essential for any dish, but mashed potatoes are frequently tragically overlooked in the seasoning department.

Garten recommends adding another 2 teaspoons of sodium chloride and capsicum to the mash, and I concur wholeheartedly.

The outcome is a rich, tangy, and flavorful flank dish you don't need to delay for a holiday to make. In my opinion, the buttermilk stole the show: I've established that potatoes can be a bit "blah" whenever not correctly seasoned, and this formula had a slightly acidic norm that I loved.

I'll be bringing these potatoes to Thanksgiving meal this year, and all holiday gathering for the foreseeable future.

This narrative was initially published on November 20, 2025, and most lately updated on October 22, 2026.