Great Spuds and Gravy Are No Small Potatoes

My husband, Michael, loves mashed potatoes and gravy with beef or roasted poultry. He could eat it the same way over and over again without growing tired of it. I prefer variety, so fortunately he has given me more latitude over the years to experiment and change things up a bit. Perhaps you or someone in your family would like to get a bit more creative with its preparation? Don’t be intimidated in the kitchen! I can help.

Mashed Potatoes

We should appreciate potatoes for their versatility. Like pasta, rice and other grains that we can keep around for a while, they’re filling and pretty happy to take whatever flavors you want to throw at them. So what other flavors do you enjoy?

Once I got permission to start experimenting, Michael loved it when I started adding roasted garlic to our mashed potatoes. If they’re organic, we even leave the skins on the potatoes. It adds a little texture and nutrition AND saves me the trouble of peeling them. Win win! If this is a new idea for you, try leaving the skins on half of them to start.

How To Change Things Up

You will need a vegetable brush, of course. Nothing fancy. You could find one for a buck. It will come in handy for scrubbing all your root vegetables: carrots, parsnips, beets, turnips…Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Did I say turnips???

Here’s what I know: As long as the dish looks familiar enough, Michael doesn’t question it. So when I sneaked turnips into his mashed potatoes for the first time, he didn’t notice. I peeled the turnip for this preparation and used half the amount compared to potatoes, so it didn’t change the typical color of the mashed potatoes. After commenting on how good it was, he asked, “What did you put in here?” I have learned to never answer that question before he’s tried it if it’s something he might find unusual. I simply reply, “You’re going to love it,” and he generally does.

Shortcuts

You like shortcuts? I do. Try dicing your potatoes and throwing them into the same roasting pan with your chicken so they cook together. They get splattered with all the delicious drippings and then you can mash them while the chicken rests. Just be aware that they will require extra liquid to make them creamy and extra time to mash because the texture will be different from boiled potatoes. But it’s worth it. They’re delicious.

Think Outside the Box

A few weeks ago I was making mashed potatoes and realized I didn’t have any milk, sour cream or yogurt. I would typically use any of those to make them creamy. So I used some chicken broth instead, a dollop of mayonnaise and a drizzle of truffle oil. Wowie zowie! What a happy accident to have had to improvise. You’re probably gawking at the extravagance of the truffle oil, but if you can get your hands on some, it’s worth it. Like so many luxurious ingredients, a little goes a long way. A little pesto of some sort would have worked well also.

What about your meat? Can you scale back the portion of meat in comparison to what else is on your plate? Rather than just having a steak on its own, could you slice down half the steak and pair it with bell peppers and onions and season it up for fajitas? If you have ground beef, you could stretch the amount in a shepherd’s pie: (Meat with gravy and veggies of your choice–such as peas, carrots and corn on the bottom of a casserole dish topped with mashed potatoes.)

Gravy

How are you going to make gravy if you’re using ground beef? Of course, there are dried and canned versions. Maybe you have some bouillon? Can you improvise with thickening whatever broth you have around? What about the leftover salty, starchy water from boiling your potatoes? Have you been saving vegetable ends to throw into a stock pot? For more flavor and color, you can experiment with things like turmeric, Worcestershire sauce and beet stems. My mother-in-law keeps a bottle of something in her cabinet with caramel color just for this purpose. It does wonders to perk up an anemic looking gravy.

I hope you haven’t been throwing any leftover bones away before dropping them into a pot of boiling water to make stock. Lamb bones, beef bones, pork bones, chicken bones, shrimp shells. They’re all free flavoring agents. So think ahead. Put the stock in the freezer for whenever you need it. (I’m not suggesting that you put shrimp stock on your shepherd’s pie, by the way…but you get the idea.)