Nicole Perry for POPSugar

We've All Been Cooking Mashed Potatoes Wrong (and How to Fix It)

You heard it here first: Tyler Florence from the Food Network has finally revealed how to make the best mashed potatoes you've ever tasted in your life. And we mean ever. Do you really want to know the secret? Use cream instead of water when you boil your potatoes. I know, it's strange.

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If you're like most of us, the thought of soaking something in a boiling dairy product is less than palatable. However, it appears that this method has been vetted and it really works.

All you need is some cream, butter, and herbs. After all, you're going to be putting these ingredients into your potatoes later, right?

A Word From the Inventor

Florence explained his method to PopSugar saying,

"Potatoes have a really delicate, beautiful minerality to their flavor profile, and when you cook potatoes in water and you pour that water down the drain, you've extracted all the flavor of the potato. So what I do with mashed potatoes — because you finish them with cream and butter anyway, right? — is I'll take that same cream and butter and add that to the potatoes and cook the potatoes in cream and butter.

So cold, peeled, chopped potatoes, cream, butter, and olive oil. I like garlic. I like sage and rosemary flavor combinations, and a little bit of thyme. When the potatoes are tender, I put a bowl on the counter and a colander inside that bowl. I pour the potatoes through the colander, and the cream will collect on the bottom. Then I'll put the potatoes back into the pot and take the potato-infused garlic cream and fold that back into the potatoes, and it's the most incredible flavor profile. It's the best mashed potato you'll ever taste in your entire life."

But really, these are the best mashed potatoes you'll ever have. Not only are they delicious, but as an added bonus, they only require getting one pot dirty which will save you clean up time.

Now all you need is something to pair your potatoes with. Why not go with a classic and make a pot roast?

The Pioneer Woman's Famous Pot Roast

Get the Pioneer Woman's recipe here.

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