Tipnique of the week, October 4, 2013

Last week I learned that a real shepherd's pie is, by definition, made of some sort of sheep. Our  chicken shepherd's pie was really a chicken cottage pie. By any other name, it still would've been topped with a layer of  mashed potatoes. I decided to treat us to the real deal, and here's a tip or two that made them extra fluff-yummy.
You can mash potatoes with one of these mashers:

or you can use this awesome thing called a potato ricer:

Or, you can do as I did last week and break out the electric mixer. No matter what you use, if you plan to mash or whip liquid and/or butter into the potatoes, HEAT THE LIQUID FIRST.

Really- adding cold milk,cream,butter,sour cream, whatever- to hot potatoes will make them gluier than they have to be. 

heat the liquid first, and you're more likely to get fluffy.

I've bolded that because it's one of the most important kitcheny things I've ever learned:  adding cold stuff to hot stuff reduces temperatures quickly and unreliably; this is hardly ever a good thing. 

Here's the way it happened last week:

The potatoes have been cooked and drained, and allowed to dry out for a few minutes.

I microwaved some evaporated milk and butter till they were steaming about as much as the potatoes, then poured the liquid in slowly while the mixer did its work:

Mixing, mixing, mixing, adding salt and pepper, mixing, mixing, mixing.....

Then, because I'm pretty bad at the slop and spackle method, they were spatula-ed  into a zip bag, and piped on top of the pie. (Zip bags for piping everything from icing to potatoes. A bonus tip.)

Yummy, fluffy creamy mashed potatoes.

Yes, I did sorta lick the bowl.