Oprah's Friggin' Mashed Potatoes

My workplace is decidedly leftist and sort of hippie. We subscribe to The Nation, Utne, and various organic vegetarian foods, slow foods, and yoga publications.
The breakroom is covered with back issues of these.

However, someone keeps bringing in old issues of more mainstream magazines, like Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and O. I find this kind of funny. There's an old issue of Marie Claire with Gwen Stefani on the cover, and someone has drawn an extremely good skull over Gwen's face with black Sharpie.

Sitting down to my lunch yesterday, I noticed that someone else had drawn X's over Oprah's eyes and mouth on the June cover of O. I don't generally read O; I find it really goody-two-shoes and patronizing. But I read the headings and one of them said something about "Oprah's mashed potatoes".

Okay. Mashed potatoes are a topic I most definitely AM HIGHLY INTERESTED IN.
Thinking that Oprah was going to share some family recipe for amazing mashed potatoes or perhaps one that had been concocted by a gifted chef she employs, I began to flip eagerly through the pages, looking for the potatoes.
I love mashed potatoes! I could eat them every day for a week.

Turns out there was only ONE SENTENCE in the whole goddamned magazine about Oprah's mashed potatoes. Apparently she DID eat them every day for a week, and she gained ten pounds. (Okay, something is severely wrong with her metabolism. Who can gain ten pounds in a week?!) She was in Morocco, blah blah, and didn't like any of the food the hotel had to offer, so she asked the chef to make mashed potatoes, and he did, and she ate them every night for a week. (I don't comprehend that. Oprah is incredibly wealthy, so I'm sure the hotel she was staying at must be so amazingly posh, with such thick towels, soft sheets and good food - how could she not like the food?! She ate no local food; no culinary delights. Just mashed potatoes.) That was it - the whole story on mashed potatoes. How dare they make a headline for that on the cover?! So misleading. I felt so ripped off!

Just in case anyone feels similarly ripped off, and now wants to make a batch of mashed potatoes, I am going to tell you how.

People argue on and on about which type of potato to use. But trust ME, because for one thing, I love mashed potatoes, and also I work at a produce company and have tasted every variety of potato from the bright purple Huckleberry to French Fingerlings to regular russets. And regular russets are indeed the potato to use! (This is not just my cockamamie opinion. It is also confirmed by one of my coworkers, who used to be a professional chef.)

If you're just making enough for two people, use three potatoes. You don't need more than that for two people. Seriously - look what happened to Oprah when she ate too many. Scrub them and boil them with the skins ON.

Boil till they are fork-tender. (You will know, because you will stick a fork into the largest of the three potatoes and it will feel tender and crumbly!)

Pour off the water and let them cool a little.

When cool enough to handle, take one potato and squeeze it through a potato ricer.

Yes, YOU NEED A POTATO RICER. A ricer is like those weird Play-Doh dolls we had when we were kids, with holes in the scalps, and when you PUSHED, the Play-Doh would come out the scalp-holes in strings and make hair on the dolls - remember those?
Well, you can have the same kind of fun by pushing a potato through a ricer. It's fast, it's fun, and it makes f*cking awesome potatoes! Don't mash with a fork because mashing too much creates starchy, gummy potatoes. Get a ricer!

After you use the ricer, the potato skins will be left behind in the ricer, and you just toss them into the compost.

Once you have your pile of riced potatoes, put them into a small pot on the stovetop on low. Add HOT MILK and stir gently till the potatoes are as creamy as you like them. Start with 1/2 cup of hot milk. Add 1 TBS of butter. It does not have to be melted - it will melt right in. They are basically done! Turn off the stove.

Now add salt, pepper, garlic - whatever. I like chives snipped on top, and if you're a carnivore, you should try mixing in crisp cooked and crumbled bacon sometime. To make them extra rich you can add some shredded cheese or sour cream.

It's okay to eat mashed potatoes. Just not every day. They're not the same as carrot sticks or wheatgrass shots.

Don't say Oprah didn't warn you.