A Food Network Chef Shares His Simple Hack for Making the Creamiest Mashed Potatoes

A big serving of creamy mashed potatoes is the best side dish. It pairs well with most meals and never disappoints. It’s especially nice to make during these cold fall months and into the winter — and it’s always a favorite at Thanksgiving. If you really want to impress your family this year, try this genius hack for making your mashed potatoes even creamier.

Food Network chef Tyler Florence is the one who came up with this easy trick that changes one of the main steps while making the savory dish. Instead of boiling the potatoes in water, he cooks them straight in the cream and butter to not waste any of the flavor.

“Potatoes have a really delicate, beautiful minerality to their flavor profile, and when you cook potatoes in water and you pour that water down the drain, you’ve extracted all the flavor of the potato,” he explained to Popsugar. “So what I do with mashed potatoes, because you finish them with cream and butter anyway, is I’ll take that same cream and butter and add that to the potatoes and cook the potatoes in cream and butter.”

Thankfully, Florence gave a bit more instruction on how to make this creamy mashed potatoes recipe happen. He says to first add “cold, peeled, chopped potatoes, cream, butter, and olive oil” to a pan, according to Popsugar. Florence’s recipe calls for 2 cups of heavy cream and 2 cups of milk for 8 potatoes. Simmer this mixture until the potatoes are tender.

Then comes the important part. While you would normally drain the water from the potatoes, missing out on all that flavor, this recipe saves the cream mixture in a separate bowl.

“When the potatoes are tender, I put a bowl on the counter and a colander inside that bowl. I pour the potatoes through the colander, and the cream will collect on the bottom,” he explained.

Once they’re separate, add the potatoes back into the pot and mash them. Then you fold the cream, infused with the potato flavor, into the pot. Make sure to combine them until they form a smooth consistency. Serve and enjoy!

“It’s the best mashed potato you’ll ever taste in your entire life,” Florence said, and we believe him!