Tonight we had leftovers from Chistmas, but since the garlic mashed potatoes were so popular, we needed to make more, so I duplicated the recipe I created the other day. Undoubtedly this has been done before by others, but here’s how I decided to make them.
Ingredients:
Yukon Gold Potatoes (or other potatoes for mashing)
Water
Garlic
Salt
Butter
Buttermilk
Peel and cut up potatoes. (Peeling is optional.) Put in pan and fill pan to half the level of the potatoes (or less). (Typically, you add more water than this when boiling potatoes, but I don’t see why you should waste water and the good liquid, especially since it would lose some of the garlic flavor.) Add whole cloves of garlic (peeled). I used 3 for enough potatoes for 9 people, but you can judge based on how strong you like the flavor. This wasn’t too noticeable — I might try it with more another time. Add salt.
Boil potatoes, garlic, and salted water 20 minutes or more until the potatoes are soft enough for mashing and most of the liquid has boiled away. Remove from heat.
Add butter and buttermilk to make mashed potatoes. (You can use milk or cream to replace buttermilk, but buttermilk will give a creamy texture and slightly tangy taste, while still remaining low in fat, especially if you use low fat buttermilk instead of whole milk buttermilk.) Of course, the butter is optional…
Mash with a potato masher. As needed, add more buttermilk and salt to taste and to get the texture and flavor you want. If necessary keep the mashed potatoes on a very low burner to keep warm or to thicken up the mashed potatoes. Your garlic will mash in with the potatoes and not be noticeable other than the flavor.
On Christmas, I actually used milk and buttermilk when mashing the potatoes, but tonight I decided to go with just buttermilk, since I had plenty that I wanted to use. I liked it better tonight, though both were good and everyone liked them.
Kendall Dunkelberg 