Mashed potato

From Free net encyclopedia

This article is about the food. For the 1960s dance craze, see Mashed Potato.

Mashed potato (mashed potatoes in American English) or puréed potato is a common way of serving potato in many countries, including Argentina, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It is made from mashed boiled potatoes (peeled or unpeeled), with heated milk or cream and butter or vegetable oil added. A French variation adds egg yolk for Pommes duchesse that is piped through a pastry tube into wavy ribbons and rosettes, brushed with butter and lightly browned.

Many cooks feel that making the dish successfully is dependent on first returning the boiled (and drained) potatoes to the empty pot and heating them to drive off surplus steam. Others feel that this is an unnecessary step. The success of the dish, however, does depend on how the potatoes are mashed. If the potato cells are damaged in the process (as by putting them in a food processor), the starch they contain makes the mashed potato sticky; a ricer, which passes the boiled potato through small openings, produces a refined texture and is generally agreed to produce the best result. Other ways of making them include using a hand implement that actually mashes them in the pot or using an electric mixer (not a blender) to purée them in what is also called whipped potatoes.

Not all varieties of potato are suitable for mashing. The best mash is made from floury varieties rather than the waxy types used as salad potatoes. If the latter are used, they will require thorough cooking and mashing or the dish will end up containing small potato chunks. Recommended varieties available in the UK include Template:Ref:

Mashed potato is also an ingredient of various other dishes, including Shepherds' pie, Colcannon and potato croquettes.

In addition to butter, cream, or milk, mashed potato may also be seasoned with salt, pepper (often white pepper, to blend in), and/or a dash of nutmeg. In some countries, other spices may be added for more flavor, e.g. a variety of common kitchen herbs. A white turnip cooked and mashed with the potatoes in a proportion of about 1:10, provides a slight "bite" that mashed potatoes proverbially lack. Alternatively, a little garlic may be cooked with it. In the U.S., mashed potatoes are often covered with gravy. In London, mashed potato is sold in pie and mash shops. It is often served with sausage, in this form being called bangers and mash. Mashed potato was the primary source of humour in the children's television series Bodger and Badger.

In many American households, the top of each serving is hollowed with a spoon in order to form a gravy and/or butter volcano crater.

Dehydrated instant mashed potato mixes are also available, as well as frozen varieties. The dehydrated varieties vary in quality and texture, and purists generally consider them to be inferior. A campaign for one such product (Smash) memorably launched the business of advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt.

1 Mashed potatoes in cinema
2 See also
3 Reference
4 External links

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Mashed potatoes in cinema

Probably the most famous mashed potato scene in cinema takes place in the 1977 American science-fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Early in the film, the central character Roy Neary (played by Richard Dreyfuss) comes into contact with space aliens and experiences a close encounter of the second kind. As a result, he becomes obsessed with UFOs - to the great dismay of his family. He begins making endless models of a distinctive mountain or hill - a place he has never actually seen, and with which he is unfamiliar. One night as he sits with his family at the dinner table, Neary suddenly starts heaping large spoonfuls of mashed potatoes onto his dinner plate. As his family watches him, he continues to pile up spoonful after spoonful, and then attempts to sculpt a shape with them. His wife and children begin to wonder if he really has lost all sense of reason and sanity, and his older son stares at him with a look of pain and sadness covering his face. Roy, with an uncomfortable look of shame, tries to acknowledge his discomfort. He says, "Well, I guess you've noticed something a little strange with Dad. It's OK. I'm still Dad. I can't describe it - what I'm feeling."

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