What’s your favourite type of mashed potato? After I make mashed potatoes at dwelling, 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 type of mashed potato, there’s no query: fancy-restaurant mashed potatoes. You understand what I imply — the sort that come beside a filet of poached salmon or white asparagus that price greater than your cellular phone invoice. The super-creamy variety 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 many it.” Plus, a couple of extra tips — like baking the potatoes, as an alternative of boiling them — to realize “really luxurious, restaurant-quality mash.” Right here, Matthew shares his recipe for pommes purée.
Pommes Purée
From French Classics: Easy and Elevated Dishes to Cook at Home, 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
effective 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 may 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 greatest and you may re-use it subsequent time you’re making mash). Bake for 60 minutes, or till the potatoes are comfortable.
Reduce 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 move it by means of a potato ricer.
Put the weighed dry potato mash in a medium saucepan over a medium-low warmth. Reduce 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’re simply utilizing it to convey the mash to your required consistency and assist get that butter inside. Add effective salt and floor white pepper to style.
Non-obligatory: Go the completed mash by means of a fine-meshed sieve. This ultimate stage is just not one hundred pc vital, however does assure superbly lump-free mash.
Thanks a lot, Matthew!
P.S. Extra potatoes, simply because we love them:
* how to make English jacket potatoes
* a potato salad trick
* what’s the best part snack of all time? this
* the perfect crunchy roast potatoes
* 8 mashed potato mix-ins
* three strategic starters for a dinner party
* social anxiety and the power of potato chips
(Images by Patricia Niven. Excerpted from French Classics: Simple and Elevated Dishes to Cook dinner at Residence by Matthew Ryle, on sale now from Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Ryle. All rights reserved.)
