Mashed potatoes are a surefire winner when the temps plummet below freezing and the January blues have well and truly set in.
The comfort food is a welcome addition to dining tables all winter long. Though deceptively simple, mash can be endlessly perfected for the most delicious results.
There's no better time to whip up a pot of mash than now, which is why The Mirror sought out the top tips of a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. The unusual tip suggested by Oliver Marlowe, the chef director and owner of Ganymede in London, is promised to make the creamiest mash ever.
Rather than boiling your spuds, the expert says cooks should instead bake them in the oven as if making jacket potatoes.
Oliver explained: "Little hack for mashed potato, the best thing to do is rather than boil them in the water which adds loads of moisture into your potato, grab a really decent red potato and bake it like you would a jacket potato.
"Bake it in the skin, ideally on a small bed of rock salt, as what that will do is pull out all the moisture from the potato."
After roasting, he explains the potatoes will be ready for a good dousing of butter and cream.
He concluded: "When it's cooked, take it out of the oven, and scrape out all the potato, which at that stage will be nice and dry. Then you can add as much of the good stuff like butter, cream, or milk into that and it will absorb more and more."
The chef went on to share other cooking tips including how to make restaurant-quality chips at home. For this, the chef says you'll need to get yourself a cheap fryer so you can have a go at triple-cooked chips.
"The best way to do it is either invest in an air fryer or a small deep fat fryer for home cooking, those are absolutely cheap as chips, about £15 from somewhere like Argos.
"Cut the chips to whatever size you fancy and boil them in salted water like you would when making roast potatoes until they're just starting to crumble at the corners and aren't fully cooked."
Oliver continued: "Then give them a good old mix in a strainer to start to slowly break them down, then fry them at 90C for about five minutes to seal it all in. At this point, you can either keep going or put them in the fridge and leave them for a couple of days, as they'll be absolutely fine."
The final step is to cook them again in the fryer at 180C until they're ready to go and this way you'll get "the crispiest chips on the outside, with the fluffiest middle".
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