Homemade Mashed Potatoes: from raw in the bag to the safety of the freezer

Homemade mashed potatoes are more than a comfort food.  Superior in every way to instant mashed potatoes, they can be prepared and frozen ahead for convenience without sacrificing flavor.

Consider the bags of potatoes available at Costco as a great way of saving time and money.  This bag cost $5.29.  It is simple to put in your cart and take home.  The potatoes are huge, weighing around a pound each.  The cost of the potatoes and cream cheese comes to about $.15 per serving.

The large size is an advantage if you are making mashed potatoes or potato salad,  The ratio of peel to potato is much smaller than for regular-sized potatoes.  They are not a suitable size for baking potatoes.  Baked potatoes will be the topic of a future post.  

In dealing with a twenty pound bag of large potatoes, procrastination is the main challenge.  Do not put off preparing your purchase for more than a week.  As they age, they get harder to peel, and then decomposition sets in!  Ugh.

Using a good quality peeler, will make the job go faster.  I especially like this one because it makes tiny grooves on the surface of the potato, improving the grip on the wet slippery potato surface.  The tip of most peelers can be used to remove small blemishes. 

Cut off any bad spots with a swipe of your knife.  A heavy duty, sharp knife does a good job of quartering the potatoes.

Summer is near the end of the season, so about a quarter of the potatoes may have bad spots.  In the fall, right after harvest, the potatoes are almost perfect.

Slice the prepared potatoes in halves and then quarters.  Time estimate:   figure about a minute per spud to peel, quarter and drop in boiling water.

Boiling the quartered potatoes prevents the over-absorption of water.  It only takes a few more minutes to fully cook the quarters, and you save dicing time.

A large pot or stock pot will work well.  This is an extra large one that holds the entire 20 pound bag worth of peeled and quartered potatoes.  I begin heating the water before peeling begins, and drop the prepared quarters right in the water.

If your pot is smaller, try boiling half the bag at a time.  Cooking time varies, but after the last potato is in the pot, and a vigorous boil begins, allow about twenty minutes of cooking time. 

Test the potatoes with a knife or a fork.  When the potatoes are tender,  Pull them out of the water and let them drain like this.

While waiting for the potatoes to cook, I get my stand mixer ready.  I like to put it right by the pot of potatoes.  Any type of heavy stand mixer will do.  Mine has cookie paddles, which I also use to mash potatoes.  Measure in 12 ounces of cream cheese and a tablespoon of salt.

I prefer using whipped cream cheese from Costco, because it is so much easier to work with.  For whipped cream cheese, I measure in three one-third cup sized ice cream scoops and plop them into the bowl.

Using a large Chinese mesh scoop, I fill my mixer bowl with potatoes.  I pour about a cup of potato water into the bowl as well.

Beginning at the slow speed, I move my way up to top speed, and let the potatoes whip for about two minutes, scraping once to make sure there are no forgotten lumps.

With a small investment in time, you have produced 20 pounds of light, fluffy mashed potatoes.  

The cream cheese improves the texture for freezing. 

I do not feel the need to add butter, although that is an option.  The simple ingredients of salt and cream cheese enhance the flavor of the potatoes, without overwhelming them.

Remove the cookie paddles attachment with a paper towel to protect your fingers from the heat.

Place the potatoes in casserole dishes or foil pans of your choice.  I find a half filled disposable steam pan will serve 6 to 8 people.  If you want to be precise, use a 1/3 cup ice cream scoop to measure your servings so that you have an accurate servings count in whatever container you use.

A fully packed foil steam pan serves 16-20 hungry people.

Put plastic film over each pan of potatoes, then stack them for storage in the freezer.  Do not mash the pans together, or you will have a potato popsicle stuck to the bottom of the upper pans.  Estimated yield for twenty pounds of potatoes:  45-48 servings. 

It is a wonderful idea to prepare Thanksgiving potatoes well ahead of the holiday.

Disposable steam pans are available in quantity at Sam's Club.  Consider buying the aluminum foil lids, too.  On half filled pans, I use plastic film so that they can be stacked.  It is handy to use the foil lid if you are completely filling the pan.  The lid can be kept on during reheating.

Here are the peels from the entire batch.

With your hands, scoop them back in to the original bag to discard, for quick cleanup.

This is the entire 20 pounds of potatoes processed into mashed potatoes and in the freezer.  The stack is about 10 inches high.  Reheat a frozen pan of potatoes  intended to serve 6 to 8 people, at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.  Double the time if the pan is loaded to serve 16-20.

For Shepard's pie, pop a frozen slab out of the foil pan, place the Shepard's pie mixture in the pan, then put the slab on top and bake.

From raw in the bag to the safety of the freezer, this method will take about an hour of your time.  I am not calculating boiling time, as the cook is free to do other things while waiting for the potatoes to cook.  

Savings of time is considerable.  There is one pot and one mixer  bowl to wash, one sink to clean out, and one trip to the freezer. With an hour of time, 45 servings of comfort food have been produced, all at a cost of $7 for the potatoes, cream cheese and foil pans.  This works out to about $.15 per serving.  

An hour to save time and money is definitely "comfort insurance."