I don’t actually tell anyone what’s in these potatoes when I feed it to them because they are so ridiculously indulgent – I just bask in the glory of being the ever-powerful potato queen and hope my friends take a walk sometime that week. That being said, these potatoes are endlessly variable and you get the same excellent texture every time. I’ve included some variations at the end. This is adopted from Tyler Florence’s recipe except I have one huge qualm – he says to discard the garlic. WE DON’T DISCARD GARLIC IN THIS HOUSE.

Recipe

1. Peel and chop potatoes into cubes.
2. Put them in your pot and fill halfway up level of potatoes with milk and fill the rest of the way up with heavy cream (or half and half or all milk or all cream or some cream and chicken stock – do with what you got and what you like).
3. Bring to a simmer and then add your flavorings. My favorite combo is an aggressive amount of thyme (throw the whole stems in), equally ridiculous amounts of garlic, and a bay leaf or two. Add salt/pep and give it a mix and leave it alone for 20 minutes. DON’T TURN IT UP. You’re not in that much of a hurry. Chill.
4. When you can pierce the potatoes easily with a fork, turn the heat off.

MAKE AHEAD ALERT: at this point if you take the potatoes out of the cream and store them separately, you can warm the cream back up and do the rest later. Alternatively, you can continue to the end and warm leftover cream to add and bring the potatoes back to life.

5. Take potatoes out into a bowl and save cream mixture and mash away however you want. As long as you don’t use a food processor I’m happy.
   Add butter, olive oil, and a little Dijon mustard. I use about a tablespoon for a four or five pound batch. You shouldn’t actually taste mustard, but don’t run away from it either.
6. Add enough of cream mixture from pot back to make it creamy – but you shouldn’t need much and fold gently. Do a little at a time because the potatoes will soak it up
7. Add grated cheese if you want.
8. Taste for seasoning AFTER YOU ADD THE CHEESE because cheese has salt. Don’t dump a ton of salt before you add salty cheese.
9. Eat, feed your friends, be the potato queen.

Tips

• You can sub in sweet potato for regular potato because life is beautiful (pictured above).
• Once, I saw some black garlic at Trader Joe’s and I remembered it was on Chopped so I bought it and I used that instead of regular garlic and it was fire.
• I bet if you caramelize some onions with the garlic + thyme and mashed those up with the potatoes, they’d be fire too.

Because steak needs a potato and vice versa! For the best mash ever – click here.