This Tool Can Make Creamy Mashed Potatoes — If You Use It Right

For an ingredient often referred to as "humble," potatoes sure have a lot of range. Roasted or fried, shredded or spiral-cut, there are so many ways to take the potato from side dish to star of the show. Mashed potatoes are a beloved, if often debated, way to add starchy goodness to your meal. We counted 13 ways to make mashed potatoes, but we know there are even more techniques out there. If it's creamy and indulgent potatoes you're after, you may want to consider using an immersion blender, but you'll need to do it the right way to avoid less-than-appetizing results.

Immersion blenders make quick work of simmered sauces and steamed veggies, and their pulverizing power can work on potatoes, but you'll need to exercise restraint. If you simply crank up your immersion blender and go to town on the potatoes, you'll wind up with a bowl of potato glue. Why? All that agitation breaks open the starch molecules, filling your mashed potatoes with sticky starch.

To achieve indulgent, creamy mashed potatoes, go slowly. After your potatoes have been boiled, drained, and allowed to dry, add butter. Press your immersion blender into the potatoes and pulse in short bursts in a single area, without moving your blender side to side. Stop the blender, lift it out of the potatoes, and repeat in a different section of the bowl. Resist the urge to push your immersion blender through your potatoes while it is running (like you would do if pureeing a vegetable soup, for example), as this will cause some areas to get over-blended and release too much starch. The goal is to blend as little as possible, even if that means leaving a few lumps behind. Don't worry, we've got tricks to take care of that.

After you've taken a pass with your immersion blender, your potatoes may be mostly creamy with a few small lumps remaining. Don't blend any further. Instead, use a sieve. By pressing your potatoes through a sieve after they've been blended, you can eliminate the last few lumps while resisting the urge to blend any further. Whether you add as much butter as he would have suggested is up to you.

Speaking of butter, more butter and less milk is the second secret to mashed potatoes that are ultra-creamy and not overly wet. Have warm butter at the ready — infused with herbs or garlic if you so choose — and add it to the potatoes before you mash or blend. Adding butter early helps to coat those pesky starch molecules and prevent them from sticking together quite so much. You can always add some milk or half-and-half later if the potatoes are too thick for your liking.

If you accidentally overdid it with the immersion blender, there is unfortunately no trick to make your mashed potatoes less gluey. You can, however, add cheese and transform your mashed potatoes into Pommes Aligot. Just keep adding Gruyère and mozzarella until you can create an epic cheese pull with your spoon, and you're ready to serve.