Article: They'll be a smash: ; The secret to fluffy mashed potatoes

WHAT is the best way to make mashed potatoes? For fluffy mashed potatoes, you do not need to first rice or mash potatoes before whipping them with an electric mixer. In fact, overbeating or mixing too long overworks the starch granules in the potatoes. The results are sticky and heavy, not fluffy. To confirm our suspicions on what would produce the best mashed potatoes, we made 10 batches in the test kitchen. The secret to fluffy mashed potatoes turns out to be not just the tool, but also the type of potato.

In the process, we also found the best way to cook the potatoes and the right proportion and temperature of the added butter and milk. Here's what we found.

The potato

There are ...

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