Garlic Butter Mashed Potatoes isn’t just about putting garlic in the mashed potatoes. Take the extra step and make clarified butter then use the oil to make garlic confit in the oven. Watch how these mashed potatoes wow your guests.

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Learn How to Make Clarified Butter

You could make clarified butter two ways low and slow or higher temp fast to separate the butter but don’t walk away from the quick method unless you want beurre noisette (hazelnut butter or brown butter to beurre noir (black butter). Take a look at the recipe and see how easy it is to make clarified butter.

Making Garlic Confit

Make Garlic Confit ahead, separate out the garlic from the oil before it solidifies and keep in the refrigerator for weeks. Use the garlic and oil in many dishes.

The recipe for Garlic Confit doesn’t use Clarified Butter but once you separate the milk solids of the butter from the oil the process of making Garlic Butter Garlic Confit is the same. Add whatever herbs to the Clarified Butter Confit you would like. I used rosemary but you could use thyme and rosemary or peppercorns or nothing at all. The resinous herbs work best in this application.

Resinous herbs are ones that have a chewy and tough texture. Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, Marjoram, Oregano and Savory fall into the resinous category. By cooking them they release their oils to produce more pronounced flavor.

What Dairy Should I Use?

This seems to be a topic in restaurant kitchens that can almost incite a riot. Luckily when the topic would come up, it never got to that extreme.

Many chefs and cooks, including the home cook, have definite opinions about what should be put into mashed potatoes. The gamet runs from, 2% to half & half to sour cream to buttermilk to whole milk and beyond.

I believe that you can make mashed potatoes with whatever makes them taste good to you. My wife makes amazing mashed potatoes with sour cream. But many chefs I have worked with would consider this a mashed potato sin.

Chef’s Off Topic Rant

Like many chefs, I have definite opinions about what and how food should be cooked but creating food that tastes good comes first. I am a traditionalist in many ways when it comes to food, a burger should not have green leaf lettuce on it. A burger should have a crunchy lettuce that gives another element to the bite of a burger or no lettuce at all. Yes, I have more to say about this topic, I’ll leave it for another time. 😎 I digress, back to mashed potatoes.

Back to Mashed Potatoes

Back to the topic at hand, as I said, use what you want or what you have made them with before. I suggest trying other dairy in these Garlic Confit Mashed Potatoes, half and half, sour cream and buttermilk give a nice mouth feel. Each change the flavor but are great in their own way.

Are you sensing a theme with dairy in mashed potatoes? Fat adds to mashed potatoes flavor & mouth feel. As the old adage goes “Fat is Flavor”.

“Fat is Flavor”

One restaurant I worked at we would make mashed potatoes with a garlic infused cream and half & half mixture that was also cross utilized in pasta dishes.

It was a great ingredient to add as the seasoned sauce with sauteed garlic and cream were great flavor in the mashed potatoes. But one chef would always bulk up the butter in the recipe when he would make them.

Let me tell you, those were always the best mashed potatoes. The added butter acted in the same way, additional fat equaled flavor and mouthfeel.

In this recipe…

When you clarify the butter you are removing the milk solids to get the oil. Most times when you use clarified butter, the oil is then used in an application to sear or fry a protein.

By making the clarified butter garlic confit, it infused the oil at a low temperature while getting the flavor of butter. Removing the milk solids allows for you to not have to deal with them when the butter naturally separates when heated. You are not losing much when you remove the milk solids.

Using half and half with the addition of the Clarified Butter Garlic Confit oil it combines different elements of fat and flavors as well as mouth feel.

Chop up the Garlic Confit cloves to add additional flavor to the mashed potatoes too! It will give additional burst of roasted garlic flavor.

What Potatoes To Use

I could continue to go on about mashed potatoes but one last thing to remember, you can make mashed potatoes with most any kind of potato. But the best potatoes to use are Russet and Yukon Gold.

These two have higher starch content that add to the texture and flavor of the mash. Yukon Gold also gives a smoother mouth feel than Russet. Russet are the most used at Holiday times but I recommend trying Yukon Gold.

I am also partial to Red Potato mashed, leaving the skin on but the starch content is lower than Russet and Yukon Gold and is a different texture in the final dish.

Try these Garlic Confit Mashed Potatoes at Thanksgiving I know you will like them.

Enjoy!