Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Infusing mashed potatoes with the flavor of roasted garlic is easy—if you have an extra hour to roast a head of garlic. Our goal was to find an easier way.


Test Kitchen Discoveries

Cut the potatoes in small pieces to allow more surface area to soak up garlic flavor and to promote even cooking.
To eliminate excess starch, which produces gluey mashed potatoes, give the raw, cut russets a good rinse under running water before adding them to the pot to simmer.
Taking a cue from our mashed sweet potatoes recipe, we simmer cut potatoes in half–and– half, butter, water, and garlic, sugar, and salt to avoid the “washing away” of flavor that can come from boiling in just water. We use just enough liquid when simmering to prevent the potatoes from scorching.
Roasting garlic can be time–consuming, so we wanted to find a faster, easier way to infuse mashed potatoes with the flavor of roasted garlic. To mimic that sweet flavor without oven, we sprinkle in just a teaspoon of sugar while sautéing the minced cloves.