True to stereotype, my mother’s side of the family — numerous, boisterous and Irish-Catholic — loves potatoes. Each Thanksgiving requires two turkeys to feed us all. That is out of necessity, but the three potato dishes we eat every year — garlic mash, sour cream mash, and a super-cheesy gratin, usually -are purely familial preference. Many of us will try a little of all three, devoting a comical amount of real estate on our plates to the beigest of foods. You could say we eat our mashed potatoes with a side of turkey.
Probably no one in my family loves a bowl of buttery, salty, creamy mashed potatoes more than I do. As a kid, I’d throw a fit if there were no leftovers, so my mom began setting aside a special portion just for me to enjoy all weekend, and I would guard it fiercely from interlopers. That practice became a long-running family joke — “Don’t even think about touching Maura’s potatoes!” — that has, I am embarrassed to admit, persisted into my 30s.
But the best mashed potatoes are worth bickering over. They’re the food equivalent of a warm blanket on a comfy couch in front of a fireplace, which, incidentally, is my other favorite part of Thanksgiving. And the best ones strike a delicate balance. They’ll stand out — but not too much.
Mashed potatoes must be versatile. They need to taste good next to every single thing piled high on that Thanksgiving plate, because they’re the glue that binds it all together. Make them too weird, like the green jalape?o mashed potato recipe I encountered, or too rich, like a hedonistic hazelnut-and-brown-butter mash I tried, and the meal will feel off-kilter. They’re a team player that can work equally well with, say, seitan loaf as with gravy, but they don’t take attention away from the star of the table.