The Secret Sauce For Mashed Potatoes With More Flavor

Creamy and thick with a mild taste, mashed potatoes provide the perfect vehicle to add in all kinds of ingredients. If they're made right, the dish is delicious on its own, but it never hurts to add a boost of flavor with something special. To elevate your mashed potatoes, add a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

Potatoes are starchy and earthy, often requiring salt, pepper, and butter to make them palatable. However, you don't need to stop there. The refined taste allows it to mesh with bolder flavors, particularly Worcestershire sauce. The condiment expertly blends sweet, savory, and tangy flavors, a result that stems from anchovies, tamarind, molasses, garlic, and onion that make up the vinegar-based sauce. The ingredients deliver a rich, pungent kick to mashed potatoes that makes them more enjoyable. We already love adding miso to mashed potatoes for a delectable umaminess, but Worcestershire sauce goes beyond that.

The condiment boosts the meaty, mouth-watering taste of shepherd's pie, a dish featuring creamy spuds, and it can do the same to classic mashed potatoes. A dash of Worcestershire sauce infuses the hearty dish with a deeply savory flavor and a hint of zestiness. After boiling and draining the potatoes, mash them and fold in the sauce along with butter, salt, and pepper. Start with a teaspoon and give it a taste before adding more if you'd like.

A dash of Worcestershire sauce works well with your standard mashed potatoes, but the condiment also does a good job of flavoring the spruced-up versions, too. If you don't know where to start, add the sauce to mashed potato recipes that have corresponding ingredients. Worcestershire's sweet, pungent taste is partially thanks to garlic, making the condiment perfect for creamy garlic mashed red potatoes. Red potatoes serve as a sweet, fluffy base for the nutty garlic and Worcestershire sauce to come together for a hearty meal.

The sauce also works well in mashed potato recipes that complement a host of its ingredients. Lobster mashed potatoes have a buttery, meaty flair that enhances the rich anchovies and pungent onions found in Worcestershire sauce. You can brown the lobster in the sauce to fully coat the crustacean in its flavor, or choose to fold it into the potatoes after mashing them. Either way, the velvety condiment elevates the dish like no other.

If you don't want the sauce to be the dominant flavor, add it to a dish that's rife with other ingredients. A dash of Worcestershire sauce pulls loaded mashed potatoes together, adding a savory, tangy quality to the bacon, cheddar cheese, and chives that dot the dish.