I could probably make mashed potatoes 3-4 nights a week and my family would love it. But they’re a ton of work, I HATE peeling potatoes, and my six-year-old will not eat a potato skin to save his life.
Thus, I’ve been testing a baked potato version that both simplifies and improves upon my previous method. Baking the potatoes first means they lose moisture and concentrate flavor. I then rice them while they’re still hot, and add fat in an order that protects starch instead of turning it into glue. Butter goes in first, dairy goes in warm, and you stop once they’re cohesive, creamy, and clean-tasting.
The result isn’t a revelation so much as a correction: potatoes that actually taste like potatoes, that reheat without falling apart, and that don’t rely on “more cream” as a crutch. Once you make them this way, asking why you ever boiled your potatoes feels like a fair question.
Snapshot
- Implements: oven; potato ricer; small saucepan; warm mixing bowl (cold bowls steal heat and break emulsions)
- Oven setting: 400–425°F (204–218°C) for 60 to 75 minutes
- Batch size: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
- 3 lb large russet potatoes (big potatoes only; small ones are a scooping tax)
- 8 to 12 Tbsp unsalted butter (start at 8; you will probably go higher)
- ¾ to 1¼ cups whole milk, cream, or a mix (amount depends on how aggressively you baked)
- Kosher salt, to taste
Optional but chef-approved
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 sprigs thyme
- 6 to 8 black peppercorns
- Parsley stems if you have them
Method
Bake the potatoes to dryness, not just doneness
Heat oven to 400–425°F (204–218°C).
Scrub potatoes. Lightly oil and salt the skins. Place directly on the oven rack or on a sheet pan. Bake 60 to 75 minutes, until a knife slides in with zero resistance and the skins feel papery.
What you are doing here is evaporating internal water. This concentrates flavor and gives you a fluffy starch matrix that will accept fat cleanly later. Boiling cannot do this. Boiling does the opposite.
Optional chef move: bake the potatoes on a thin bed of kosher salt for the last half of cooking to wick off even more moisture.
Heat the dairy gently and intelligently
While the potatoes bake, combine milk or cream with butter in a small saucepan.
If using aromatics, add them now.
Heat to about 140°F (60°C). Hot enough to melt butter and mobilize fat-soluble aromas. Not boiling. Not simmering. Boiling drives off volatile compounds and tightens milk proteins.
Hold warm. Remove aromatics before using.
This step is straight out of restaurant prep. Hot dairy integrates. Cold dairy shocks starch and forces you to overwork the potatoes.
Scoop while hot, then let steam escape
Remove potatoes from oven. Split lengthwise.
Scoop flesh into a warm bowl. Leave a thin layer behind to avoid skin bitterness and to keep the skins usable for Potato Skin Chips or other purposes.
Pause 30 to 60 seconds. Let visible steam escape.
This step prevents trapped moisture from turning your mash gluey later.
Rice the potatoes dry
Pass the hot potato flesh through a ricer into the warm bowl.
Do not add butter yet. Do not add liquid yet. Do not re-rice.
What the ricer does here is separate starch granules cleanly without shearing them. This is why food processors produce paste and ricers do not.
Butter first. Always butter first.
Add butter to the riced potatoes. Fold gently until melted and evenly distributed.
Fat coats starch granules, creating a barrier that prevents excessive hydration. This is the single most important texture safeguard in mashed potatoes.
This is why chefs sound religious about this step.
Add dairy gradually and stop early
Begin adding hot dairy a little at a time, folding gently with a spatula.
Stop as soon as the potatoes loosen into a cohesive, creamy mass. They should look plush and spoonable, not loose or pourable.
Season with salt. Taste. Adjust.
Resist the urge to keep “fixing” them. Overworking is the enemy.
Notes, swaps, and guardrails
Why restaurants bake (not boil)
Restaurants bake potatoes for mash because it concentrates flavor instead of diluting it. Baking drives off water, tightens starch, and preserves that roasted potato aroma that boiling leaches away. That’s why potato skins show up on menus: the mash is a byproduct of that prep flow, not the star of it. Save your skins for Potato Skin Chips With Garlic Avocado Oil, and consider garlic confit in avocado oil for mashing cloves into the finished dish or for crisping the skins.
The two details that matter
Scoop while hot so steam can escape before any dairy goes in. Use dairy that’s hot but not boiling, infuse it if you like, and add it gradually. That combination keeps the mash fluffy instead of gluey and lets the potato flavor stay in charge instead of being buried under cream.
Dairy temperature
One chef gives an exact range for steeping dairy: roughly 130–140°F (54–60°C). Hot enough to extract herb aromatics, not so hot that you drive them off. That’s not internet cooking lore. That’s line-cook chemistry.
Why the ricer wins here
Baked potatoes already have a dry, fluffy interior. A ricer breaks them into uniform particles without rupturing starch granules the way aggressive mashing can. You get creamy but not elastic, rich but not dense. Restaurant practice: rice before adding any fat or liquid, work while the potatoes are hot, and do not re-rice or overwork once dairy is in. If you add butter first and let it coat the starch, you get even better texture insurance. This is why some chefs say “butter first, milk later” like it’s gospel.
Texture tuning
- Thicker mash holds gravy better.
- Slightly looser mash eats richer on its own.
- If you overshoot and go too loose, stop adding liquid immediately and rest the potatoes for a minute. Starch will reabsorb slightly.
Why this reheats well
Because the starch structure was dry and fat-coated before liquid was added, these potatoes reheat without breaking. Restaurants rely on this. You can hold them warm or reheat gently with a splash of milk and a knob of butter.
Final thought
This is not a trick recipe. It is simply refusing to wash flavor down the drain. The chefs who do this professionally are not experimenting. They’re describing a solved problem. Once you’ve eaten mashed potatoes made this way, boiled mash starts to taste rinsed.