I love mashed potatoes but the whole boiling-then-mashing thing is more work than I'd like to do, particularly for a weeknight meal, and roasting the garlic for 45 minutes is just out of the question. This recipe takes advantage of the newer small potatoes and fully leverages the oven for a mash that's manageable as a weeknight side.
Ingredients
4 cups baby or new potatoes, preferably baby Yukon golds if you can find them
6 cloves garlic, skins on
1/2 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup half and half, milk, greek yogurt, or cashew cream
2 tbsp unsalted butter (optional)
Kosher salt
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Prick each potato once or twice with a fork, then add them and the garlic cloves to a bowl (skins still on). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and 1/2 tsp kosher salt. Toss well, then spread out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, making sure nothing is touching anything else. If you accidentally lost some skin while separating the garlic cloves, put the naked side face down on the baking sheet. Set the bowl aside - do not rinse. Roast until potatoes are soft (test by pricking a fork - when it goes through the middle easily, they are done), about 20-30 minutes.
Return potatoes to the bowl. Remove the garlic from the skins and add half to 2/3rd of the cloves to the bowl. With a steak knife and fork, chop the potatoes and garlic into small pieces in the bowl, mixing and chopping randomly. They should be nice and soft and you should be able to easily cut through them, so this process should take less than half a minute. Make sure to chop the garlic into very small pieces if it is still somewhat solid after you've run a knife through it.
After the potatoes and garlic are chopped, add the butter, then mash the pieces together with the fork. If you reserved some of the garlic, this is the time to taste and see if you'd like to add more (make sure you chop it before mashing or someone at your dinner table will end up with a mouthful of garlic). Add the cream/milk and stir. Check for salt, butter, and consistency, adding water or cream/milk/yogurt if desired.
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