Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Yum

It’s hard not to love potatoes.  They are kind of like the best friend of the dinner table– grinning amicably beside anything from a gorgeous Sunday roast beef to an easy summer burger.  They can be boiled, braised, baked, fried, or turned into lovely potatoes au gratin, smothered in cheesy loveliness.  But even the humble potato likes to get dressed up in its Sunday best, sometimes, and this recipe is the equivalent of its dashing wedding tuxedo– it makes you look, take a breath, and then come back and look again.

It’s just that good.

What are we waiting for?  Let’s do this!

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

4-5 medium Russet potatoes

4 tbsp. melted butter

2-4 tbsp. heavy cream

1 head roasted garlic (more on this later)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Begin by roasting your garlic.  Cut the tops off several heads of garlic so that the cloves are exposed.  Place garlic in a shallow baking pan and drizzle cloves with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Cover pan with foil and roast at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes, until cloves are soft.

Peel potatoes and cut into cubes roughly an inch square.  Boil potatoes until tender.  Drain potatoes and use a mixer to whip other ingredients into potatoes.  Serve immediately.

Now, in pictures! 🙂

Have you ever tried roasted garlic?  Um . . . you mean that “Don’t come near me or my breath will knock you out and exorcise every ghost for 50 miles around” stuff?  Nooooo . . . I don’t eat that.  Well, whether you love garlic or hate the strong taste, I bet you’ll love roasted garlic.  Roasted garlic has a smooth, buttery, oh-so-subtle garlic flavor that takes almost any dish from “this is good, honey,” to “Um . . . babe, will you marry me?  And do your recipes come with you?”  Hehe.

Garlic is really easy to roast, and I’m going to show you how.  You can also roast a few extra heads of garlic and freeze them for later use, anytime you happen to have the oven on for something else.  It’s so easy you’ll wonder why you didn’t roast garlic LONG before this.

Start by taking your heads of garlic and cutting a little bit off the top (the small pointy end)– just enough that you can see the cloves inside.

Put your “exposed!!!!” (haha) garlic heads in an oven safe baking pan and drizzle them with a little olive oil.  The oil will run down into the cloves.  I usually salt and pepper the cloves, too, but that’s optional.  I just feel like the salt and pepper gives the garlic even more flavor.

Cover the pan tightly with foil and bake the garlic at 350 degrees for 50 minutes to an hour, until the cloves are soft.  You can poke the cloves with a sharp knife to see when they are soft, if you need to, but I usually find that an hour is just about right to make the garlic nice and squishy.  🙂

After an hour take the cloves out of the oven, remove the foil, and let them cool down.  During this time you may savor the delicious smells wafting from your oven.  You’re welcome.

When the garlic is cool, squeeze the garlic “paste,” for lack of a better word, out of the papery garlic skins.  Voila.  You now have roasted garlic, which is perfect for spreading on top of baked brie and tearing into with crackers.  *ahem.  I mean, dipping into daintily with crackers.  (*Crunch!  Crunch!).  It’s also great for mixing into casseroles, soups, and all kinds of POTATO dishes (Hence this delicious recipe!).  I love to roast a few extra heads of garlic and freeze the pulp individually in Ziploc bags so that I always have this tasty stuff handy.

Now how ’bout them potatoes????  Potatoes are so agreeable and sweet– you just can’t mess ’em up!  Peel your potatoes and then cut them into cubes about an inch long.  Don’t measure– just chop them up into chunks.  Boil the potato pieces for 20-25 minutes, until the potatoes are soft when you pierce them with a knife.  That just means . . . DRUM ROLL . . . that your beauties are done!

The next part is super easy– just drain your potatoes and then throw them into the bowl of your stand mixer.  Add in your melted butter, roasted garlic, and some salt and pepper to taste.  Start mixing slowly, and then gradually increase the speed, adding the cream little by little until the potatoes are the consistency that you want.

Take a little taste and add a little more salt and pepper, if you want.  You may want to taste again . . . and again . . . and again.  Just keep saying “someone has to do it.”  No one will ever suspect your sweet, innocent little face as you stuff your mouth full of delicious, creamy, roasted garlic goodness.

Because you did it.  And I’m just so proud of you.

 

 

 

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