Smashed Potatoes (Cuz That’s How I Spell It!)

I call ’em smashed potatoes. Why? In the end, it’s just more fun to say. Try it.

“Smashed potatoes.”

Couldn’t help but smile, could you?

Okay, enough tomfoolery. Just like pot roast, good smashed (or mashed, if you must) potatoes should be one staple every man can easily whip up. And no, that garbage from a box doesn’t count!

The Stats

Since it’s my mission to prove to every guy out there that he can cook, I like to break everything down into stats based on the time, money, and energy necessary to prepare these tasty, healthy foods. Here’s what I came up with for these smashed potatoes:

• Money: $1.62-$1.99
• Energy: 12 min work (17 min for garlic mashed)
• Time: add 30 minutes for unattended cooking time
• Calories: 1,750-1,777 kcal

For the Love of Butter

Have you ever tried to make mashed potatoes from a recipe yourself only to have them come out tasting like crap? Have you ever went over someone else’s house for a dinner of dry, flaky mashed spuds?

Blame the fear of fat still gripping our society.

Good mashed potatoes require lots of saturated fat. A paltry tablespoon of butter just won’t do it for a big batch.

During the last 30 or so years, butter consumption has plummeted. During this same time, the health issues that highly-saturated fats such as this tend to take the blame for–obesity, heart disease, cancer–have skyrocketed. While correlation doesn’t imply causation, you can be damned sure that a negative correlation as big as this means you’re off the hook for butter consumption. (Phew!)

The lipid hypothesis has been thoroughly debunked, but few people realize it yet after decades of brainwashing by the USDA and mainstream nutrition experts. In light of human evolution and observations of healthy societies (See: that damned “French Paradox”) I suggest most people consume more animal fat and less vegetable oil.

Put simply: unless you are casein intolerant, you can safely regard butter as a health food. (Feels good to know that, dunnit?) Use as much butter as it takes to get them tasty taters.

Scary Spuds?

I feel bad for the potato.

In a culture where “plant-based diets” are hyped by everyone to be superior to those heavy in animal products, the potato seems to stand alone as the veggie most people love to hate.

Blame the glycemic index if you must, a helpful tool for diabetics that has nonetheless scared most normally-sane people into thinking that every tater they eat will cause their insulin to spike, packing away massive amounts of fat. Humankind has undoubtedly been eating starchy roots and tubers for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. (As soon as we learned how to cook, these highly-caloric starches would have proved irresistible.)

The phenomenon to blame for rising levels of overweight and obesity is not the insulin spikes that follow a carbohydrate-rich meal, but rather a state of insulin resistance, where the human body doesn’t respond to this hormone effectively. (Most likely caused by excessive sugar consumption.)

That being said, there is enough anecdotal evidence for me to suggest carbohydrate restriction for a small minority of people. Namely, those of us who are inactive and have been overweight for a long time eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) heavy in refined carbs such as sugar and flour. If this isn’t you, feel free to eat as much of these potatoes as you like!

The Ingredients

• 4 large potatoes
• 1 stick butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 6 cloves garlic (optional)

The Recipe

1. Take the butter out of the fridge and cut into 8 pieces to soften. Start a large pot of water boiling for the potatoes.
2. Peel the potatoes.
3. Boil potatoes for about 30 minutes, until softened. (It’s better to slightly overcook rather than slightly overcook.)
4. Drain potatoes and return to the pot, along with the butter.
5. Using a glass, fork, or masher, smash the potatoes and butter together until it’s a uniform mixture.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Extra Credit: Garlic Mashed Potatoes

For all you ambitious bachelor chefs, here’s a brief variation for garlic mashed potatoes. Make the potatoes as above, but add in the following work:

1. Set a small pot of water to boil at the same time you set a large one to boil for the spuds.
2. Peel the garlic at the same time as you peel the potatoes.
3. Toss the garlic in the small pot of boiling water at the same time you put the potatoes in the large one.
4. Drain the garlic at the same time you drain the potatoes, and add the cloves to the large pot along with the potatoes. Mash them all together and season to taste.

Now Take Action!

This is definitely something I’d never eat all by itself, but smashed potatoes go awesome with everything from steak to pot roast, y’know, all the manly meals. If you like to eat a lot of this dish, you can easily scale up this recipe as well. As long as you have a big enough pot to boil the potatoes, the sky’s the limit.

Tagged as: butter, mashed potatoes, potatoes, recipes