Wednesday nights growing up, my Mum, my brother and I would trundle down the highway a town over to have supper with my Grandma. In a perfectly grandmotherly scheme of fairness, my brother and I got to take turns to choose what we would eat for supper.

One week it would be my younger brother’s turn to pick, and he would pretty much invariably choose macaroni and cheese with breakfast sausages and carrot sticks. And the next week it would be my turn and I would ask for mashed potatoes and gravy.

I can hear your thoughts now, “But Dana, that isn’t a meal. That’s a side dish.” Which is true, but it was the part of the meal I cared about being on the table. So she would roast something, make gravy, and make her unbelievably awesome mashed potatoes. She made these lusciously smooth mashed potatoes, affectionately called cloud potatoes, because somehow using heavy things like  potatoes, butter and milk she made them gorgeously light, almost ethereal. Grandma’s are magical that way.

These aren’t her mashed potatoes (though now I feel I should make a phone call and find out how she does it), but from one mashed potato fiend to and of you lurking out there, these ones are pretty darn good too!

Browned Butter Mashed Potatoes

2 pounds potatoes

1/4 Cup butter

1/4 Cup milk

salt and pepper

  • Peel half of your potatoes (or all of them if you are opposed to skins) and cut them into rough chunks.
  • Boil until tender, then drain well.
  • Place a saucepan over medium heat and brown your butter: After the butter melts it will foam up, but as the foam subsides, watch for the milk solids to start browning. Remove from heat.
  • Mash the browned butter, milk, salt and pepper into the potatoes until luscious and smooth.

I’m going to love a potato pretty much no matter how it is presented to me, and like I said above, there is a special place in my heart for a potato that has been mashed. Adding browned butter to your mash is a really simple way to amp up the dish with extra flavor without adding too many extra steps. Nutty, buttery, creamy potatoes? I’ll have seconds!

Mr says: Brown butter makes everything better.

This time last year: How to Hard Boil an Egg

And the year before: Potato Salad Revisited