Add Egg Yolks For Richer And Creamier Homemade Mashed Potatoes

Eggs are an almighty staple with multifaceted culinary powers that can thicken, flavor, emulsify, and bind ingredients in countless recipes from baked goods to soups to sauces. Western and Eastern cuisines commonly utilize raw eggs cracked over and stirred into dishes to add depth of flavor and a thick, velvety coating; Italians use a raw egg to create a sauce on the fly for pasta carbonara while Japanese cuisine cracks a raw egg over steamed white rice in tamago kake gohan.

In addition to rice and pasta, you can add potatoes to the list of carbohydrate staples that will benefit from the many attributes of a raw egg. Adding egg yolks to a pot of mashed potatoes is an easy, dairy-free texture and taste upgrade that doesn't require any special techniques. The yolks harbor all the flavorful fats and emulsifying components and will thus effectively unify the fat and water in potatoes, translating to a smoother, uniformly creamy pot. Plus, the buttery richness of the yolks will pair perfectly with the earthy savoriness of the potatoes in a classic recipe and offer a perfect complement to more elaborate recipes like roasted garlic mashed potatoes.

There's no need to temper the egg yolk when you add it to a mashed potato recipe. Simply stir it into the mashed potatoes along with the other wet ingredients and seasonings. The suggested ratio of egg yolks to potatoes is one egg yolk for every pound and a half of potatoes.

You can apply the egg yolk hack to any mashed potato recipe you'd like for richer, creamier results. As with yolk-heavy dishes like brioche or egg noodles, mashed potatoes infused with egg yolks will have a noticeably yellow hue. You can use egg yolks in addition to cream and butter for the most decadent flavor and texture, but you can also use egg yolks in a two-ingredient mash instead of dairy by blending the mashed boiled potatoes with a bit of their starchy cooking water and egg yolk.

If separating yolks from whites sounds like a daunting task, there are plenty of genius hacks to successfully isolate yolks. The water bottle hack uses an empty plastic water bottle to suck the yolk from the white. A tablespoon measure is another accessible tool to scoop the yolk from the white. If your potato masher has a round, slotted head then you can use it as a strainer for the whites and a barrier for the yolk. This is especially convenient for mashed potatoes as you can use the masher to separate the eggs and mash them into your potatoes.

Egg whites aren't a part of this mashed potato hack, but you can reserve them for a myriad of other uses, from frittatas to cocktail foam. They'll keep in the freezer for up to a year.