2015年03月10日
Mashed Potatoes Are Absolutely Skippable At Thanksgiving
They're too carby, too time intensive—and too good to be buried under gravy.
When I first told my colleague Matt Duckor that I never served mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, I think he died a little inside. But I'm convinced of the rightness of my position .
RelatedYes, You *Do* Need to Eat Mashed Potatoes at ThanksgivingView article
It's not that I hate mashed potatoes. In fact, I love them. Who wouldn't? Butter, milk, cream, salt, and potatoes can never add up to anything bad. In fact, I love them so much that I don't want to their flavor obscured by oceans of gravy.
The question isn't whether mashed potatoes are delicious. Of course they are. The question is whether you really need them at this particular meal.
After all, Thanksgiving is already a shameless carbfest Business Broadband--you've got the stuffing (which is non-negotiable) and the sweet potatoes (ditto). Do you really need another kind of potato on the table?
And it's not just that mashed potatoes aren't really necessary. It's that they take time--time that's better spent cooking a side dish that helps counteract all that richness. I use about nine sticks of butter in my Thanksgiving menu, and if I added mashed potatoes to that meal, I'm pretty sure that folks would fall asleep right onto them.
Are we so starved for potatoes that we need to eat them on Thanksgiving? I'd prefer to keep my menu focused on foods that scream fall hong kong hotels, harvest, or holiday. Humble mashed potatoes, while delicious, hardly qualify as iconic Thanksgiving fare.
Mashed potatoes have a time and a place. I'll take mine alongside a pork chop or some roast chicken, a few days after I've finished digesting the biggest feast of the year.
