For many years I have done my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes in exactly the same way. But I started to wonder if perhaps I was being a little rigid about it. I saw all these social media posts about people making their mashed potatoes early and leaving them in a crockpot all day and i thought to myself, "Hmm, am I making avoidable trouble for myself?"
Also Pete told me that Adam Ragusea disagreed with every single thing I said about making mashed potatoes, and Adam Ragusea is the king of pointing out unnecessary rigidity.
"Guess what, kids," I said, "I'm branching out. We're trying an Instant Pot version this year. I'm going to do them early and keep them warm"
This was a mistake. They weren't, like, dismal. But they were very far from celestial -- kind of funny-colored, kind of dense. When I was fretting beforehand about whether it was a bad idea to branch out, the kids said, "Mom, it will be fine. Potatoes plus butter -- people will eat that."
I was sitting next to Pete at dinner and we agreed on the inferiority of the Instant Pot version. I asked him about the Adam Ragusea video and his conviction that I had been needlessly emphatic about my approach to mashed potatoes; we had talked about it before he tried the recipe but not afterward. He said, "Adam Ragusea's conclusion that his mashed potatoes were the same as your mashed potatoes was wrong. All of his points were valid. But your mashed potatoes are better."
We might have to make the One True Mashed Potato Recipe later this weekend.
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