Add Some Texture To Mashed Potatoes With An Ingredient From Your Freezer

Mashed potatoes land on many a comfort-food list, for many a good reason. They're thick, warm, buttery, nutritious, and delicious. But let's be honest: They sometimes need a little help getting there. Fortunately, potatoes are one of the most versatile vegetables on the planet, and they play well with others. So when craving some contrast and texture in that creamy tater mound, look no further than your trusty freezer. It likely harbors some plain-jane vegetables awaiting their chance to shine. 

Adding frozen vegetables to mashed potatoes is a simple way to create colorful, textured, and highly nutritious dishes. Since frozen produce typically gets harvested at peak ripeness, then quickly blanched and frozen, it retains all the characteristics you want in a mashed-potato jamboree: flavor, contrast, and loads of vitamins and nutrients. With all the mash-up possibilities, plus a boost in healthy eating, mashed-potato with veggies will soon climb further up your all-time-favorites list.

We're not talking about simply stirring vegetables into a heap of mashed glory, though that's a quick fix not to be entirely dismissed. But better options exist, and they come with perky British names like "bubble and squeak" and "shepherd's pie." Plenty of other less colorfully named, but fully delicious, mashed-potato dishes also deserve a slot in daily comfort-food rotations. 

Pairing them with mashed potatoes is one of the best ways to use frozen vegetables in your cooking. It's particularly tasty in three British dishes, all of which are staple foods in restaurants, pubs, and countless home kitchens. The first, shepherd's pie, is a hearty, warm meat pie I grew up making and eating during summers at my family's seaside cafe outside London. It's an everyman's dish, beloved by swarthy fishermen and tea-time ladies alike. This savory pie, and its close cousin, cottage pie, consists of ground beef or lamb, gravy, spices, and lots of vegetables, most commonly frozen peas, carrots, and corn kernels. The mixture gets topped with plain or cheesy-garlic mashed potatoes, and oven baked until the potatoes turn a light golden brown. 

Also from the motherland is bangers and mash, less colorfully called sausage and mash. It's exactly what it sounds like: pan-fried link sausages, smothered in onion gravy, and served atop a mound of buttery mashed potatoes. The frozen vegetable element can come in the way of a side of carrots and peas. The third classic is my personal favorite: bubble and squeak. It's traditionally made from leftover potatoes mashed into a pan with cabbage or other greens, then pan-fried until crispy on the outside.  

Once you get going, it's easy to spread the potato love. Try turning leftover mash and thawed veggies into crispy fried potato cakes or patties, similar to an Irish colcannon with kale. From mashed-potato casseroles to fish pies, and chicken-and-veg bakes with spinach and peas, the possibilities are endless. If you're pinched for time, consider store-bought mashed potatoes, or make your own with these different mashed potato methods.