Ingredients
• one medium size russet potato for each person you are cooking for, or one large potato for two people; you get the idea
• 1 tbsp margarine/butter per medium potato (more or less as desired)
• 1 tbsp plain non-fat yogurt per medium potato (more or less as desired)
• a bit of milk to make it more creamy if you think it is too thick
Gear
• vegetable peeler
• cutting board
• knife
• vegetable steamer basket
• pot with a lid big enough to hold the steamer basket and your chopped potatos
• a stainless steel bowl for mashing in, if your cooking pot has a non-stick surface
• a colander is helpful and recommended
• potato masher
• measuring spoons
• stove
Making It
Step 1:
Wash your potatoes in cold running water and scrub off dirt with your hands. They make vegetable brushes for cleaning potatoes, but they also make Salad Shooters and I see no compelling need for either.
Step 2:
Using your vegetable peeler or your laser vision, peel your potatoes.
Step 3:
Using a knife and/or your peeler, remove sprouts and eyes and black parts and green parts. Basically, remove the parts you wouldn’t want to eat.
Step 4:
You are going to cut your potatoes into cubes to make cooking quicker. Put your clean and peeled potatoes on your cutting board. If there black bits, cut them out as you work. Slice the potato in slices that are about 1 inch thick. Lay the slices flat on the cutting board and cut them in a grid to make cube-like shapes that are about 1 inch on each side. You are trying to make pieces that are all approximately the same size so that they will all take about the same amount of time to cook. You don’t have to be anywhere near perfect with this. Just have the pieces all mostly around the same size.
Step 5:
Put your steamer basket, open, in the bottom of your pot and fill the pot with water to the bottom of the steamer basket (about an inch).
Step 6:
Put the potato chunks in the steamer basket in the pot, and put the lid on the pot.
Step 7:
Put the pot on the stove and set the heat to High until the water is boiling (you will see steam), then you can set the heat to medium-low.
Step 8:
Total cooking time is approximately 20 minutes. It might take a bit longer than this. At 20 minutes, stick a fork into one of the larger pieces. If the fork goes in easily (potato is soft), then the cooking is done. If the potato still feels a bit hard, keep cooking and check again in 3 – 5 minutes.
Step 9:
Now you need to get your potatoes out of the pot. I think the easiest way is to dump them, basket and all, into a colander in your sink.
Step 10:
Put the cooked, drained potato chunks either back into the now empty cooking pot (only if it does not have non-stick surface), or into a stainless steel bowl.
Step 11:
Add 1 tbsp of margarine/butter and 1 tbsp of plain nonfat yogurt per medium potato that you cooked. Add more or less of these to taste.
Step 12:
Mash and stir your potatoes with your potato masher. Mash. Mash. Mash… Are we done yet? Mash. Mash until the chunks that are left are not bugging you.
Step 13:
Optional: Stir/mash in a little milk, if you like, to make it less thick.
Step 14:
Eat your lovely mashed potatoes. Ahhhhh…