Wrangler Dani

I remember standing in our next-door neighbor’s kitchen, as he told me they were having chicken and “smashed potatoes” for dinner. I looked at the clean countertop with the unassuming green cardboard box sitting atop it, waiting for his mother to come in and start whipping up some supper. My 10-year-old brain did not comprehend. “So what’s in the box?” I wondered, and he looked at me like I was crazy.

“Smashed potatoes,” he answered, shaking his head at my ignorance.

This was new to me. I had never shaken a box and thought that the rain-maker-style noises coming from inside would deliver the creamy mashed potatoes pictured on the box-front. I’d actually never made anything from a box: everything in our house was thrown together from bare ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar and eggs made cakes, pasta, milk and grated cheese made mac and cheese. So too, big, hearty-looking Russet Potatoes were scrubbed with a small stiff brush, cut into quarters, put into a large pot to boil. They weren’t peeled or even cut particularly small, part of the joy of mashed potatoes is that they do taste like potatoes, skin and all.

They were pulled from the water, placed in a large bowl with milk, butter and a steel potato masher, and smashed and mixed together as the steam rises. Today I still make mashed potatoes the way my mom does, and although I like to play with ingredients that she never used, adding things like creme fraiche and garlic, the essence is still the same: mashed potatoes should taste as though they came from the ground, not a box.