10 Creative Ways To Use Up Leftover Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are a fan-favorite side dish and one of the most versatile accompaniments out there. They go well with highbrow steakhouse classics, like New York strip or ribeye, and can be served as a comforting pairing for old-school favorites, like pork chops or Salisbury steak. And what Thanksgiving table would be complete without them? In other words, it's rare that you'll have extra mashed potatoes on hand.

Of course, despite all of the love geared toward mashed potatoes, there are some occasions where your eyes may be bigger than your stomach, and you have more on hand than expected. Thanksgiving leftovers, changing dinner party plans, and other similar occasions can leave you with more mashed potatoes than you know what to do with. While you can just melt some butter on them and eat them straight, there are many fun and inventive ways to use them that involve more than simply enjoying them from the container. If you're looking to give your spuds a new lease on life, try out some of these creative uses for leftover mashed potatoes.

Mashed potatoes are often enjoyed as a hearty side dish, but there are countless ways to reinvent them, including options for a tasty snack or mouthwatering appetizer. One of the easiest is to shape them into leftover mashed potato balls and fry them until they're crispy. While the ball shape is popular — and means they can be easily skewered and dunked into a dipping sauce of your choosing — you could also turn them into patties, balls, or tater tot-like tubes.

This hack can work for plain mashed potatoes or flavored mashed potatoes (like roasted garlic, bacon-infused, or cheesy potatoes). You can even incorporate other ingredients into the filling of the balls — like chopped onion or meat — to give them their own unique spin. The one caveat, though, is that you want to avoid any ingredients that will make the patties too wet or cause the spuds not to stick together or hold their shape. To help with this, you'll want to add an egg to the mashed potatoes, along with some bread crumbs and seasonings. When it comes time to assembly, shape your spuds as desired before dredging them in flour, then shallow-fry them in oil until they're crispy and golden on both sides.

These tasty croquettes would be excellent dunked in gravy or served with cranberry sauce for a salty-savory twist. You could also use them as a crispy layer on your Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich.

You'd probably be surprised by the number of foods you can cook in a waffle iron. This handy breakfast appliance isn't just useful for that morning stack of Belgian waffles; you can also repurpose it to give your leftovers an edge. Cooking your mashed potatoes in a waffle iron is a smart idea because the iron will give it little pockets — perfect for holding melted butter, gravy, or sauce — and will help crisp up the edges.

To try this at home, you'll want to start with a well-greased waffle iron; neglecting to do so may cause issues with your potatoes sticking and burning. You'll also want to add some flour and eggs to the mashed potatoes to help them stick together in a patty (rather than fall apart). Cook the spuds until they look and smell delicious, then serve them with your sauce or toppings of choice. Sour cream and chives are a really underrated option. The tartness of the cream will offer levity while the chives will offer a slightly allium-y flavor. You can also add a little sprinkle of cheese and herbs to the batter itself, or use any type of mashed potatoes you prefer.

While mashed potato waffles make an excellent side dish for your main course, you can also repurpose them for the bread on a breakfast or deli meat sandwich or a burger. It's a versatile, reinvented dish that you can eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

The last thing that you're probably thinking about when you see that crock of leftover mashed potatoes sitting on the dinner table is candy. But it turns out potatoes make an excellent addition to one old school sweet. We can thank Appalachia for giving us this unique and spud-centric candy, and some have traced its origins back to the Depression era when pantry and baking staples were hard to come by.

Potato candy is just as its name sounds: A delightful sweet treat made with leftover mashed potatoes. The unflavored spuds (leave your bacon or garlic ones for another time) can be mixed with powdered sugar to give them structure before being smeared with peanut butter and rolled up into bite-sized pinwheels. The key to making this thrifty candy at home is to really do it by feel; you'll need to mix a considerable amount of sugar with the potatoes in order to form a dough of sorts. You may need upwards of 6 to 8 cups of sugar per potato, which goes to show just how sweet this treat can be.

The peanut butter, luckily, balances this sweetness out a bit. But if you don't fear the sweetness, consider customizing your potato candy recipe with add-ins like crushed candy bars, colorful M&M's, and more. You may even want to swap the traditional peanut butter addition out with Nutella or some other sweet spread, or add a layer of jam for a unique spin on a PB&J.

We're always on the hunt for ways to upgrade our favorite dips, and one of the easiest ones to customize is hummus. The recipe for hummus is fairly simple, after all: Blend chickpeas, oil, and lemon juice until creamy. From there, you can add herbs, unique oils, other vegetables, and — you guessed it — mashed potatoes.

Since you can easily upgrade your crock of mashed potatoes by adding in a scoop of this savory spread, why not elevate hummus by adding mashed potatoes to it? The spuds will add a heartier texture, heft, and neutral flavor that can be enhanced by whatever else you decide to include. The hummus will add creaminess to the potatoes, while also infusing them with extra protein and fiber. You'll want to make sure your mashed potatoes are super creamy and that both your hummus and spuds are at the same temperature — otherwise, you'll risk biting into a cold wad of potato in your hummus.

You'll also want to pay attention to the ratios of hummus and mashed potatoes you use. A little goes a long way, and if you add too much mashed potato, you could risk breaking your dipping vessel when you go in for a scoop. Besides plain hummus, experiment with red pepper, chipotle, and garlic (especially with garlic mashed potatoes) flavors. Don't be afraid to garnish your dip either, or switch up your dipping vessel to add character and crunch to your new favorite spread.

A blustery winter night calls for a cozy bowl of shepherd's pie. Shepherd's pie is traditionally made with lamb (hence its name), but you can also use your leftover mashed potatoes to make a cottage pie — which is paired with proteins like crumbled beef, turkey, or even lentils. This is an excellent way to use up a large batch of mashed potatoes, or disguise spuds that are particularly gluey or can't be enjoyed solo as a side dish.

The trick to making an unforgettable shepherd's pie is to ensure your mashed potatoes are creamy and easy to spread. If you're using leftover spuds, you can make a one-pot meal. Cook the protein and veggies (such as frozen peas and carrots) together in a cast iron skillet before layering on your potatoes and baking. While an easy method to try is slathering on your potatoes with a silicone or offset spatula (like you would use for frosting cupcakes), you can also grab a piping bag and tip and go to town for a pie that looks as good as it tastes.

Adding aromatics like garlic to your leftover spuds will also enhance their flavor and help complement whatever you season the protein and veggie mixture with. You can also top the potato layer with cheese or pop it near the broiler for a better color and crust.

If you've ever seen "potato bread" at the grocery store, know that it's indeed made with real potatoes. The tubers are added to this type of common bread to help keep it soft and extend its shelf life. While the potatoes don't do much by way of flavor, they are loaded up with starch, which retains moisture in the bread dough. That being said, you can turn your leftover mashed potatoes into the best and fluffiest dinner rolls you've ever had with a few simple tricks.

The first is not to use too much potato; you may only need 1 part mashed potato for every 4 parts of flour. Since the potatoes will also add starch, cut your moisture (milk, water, or other) by half. Of course, bread baking is not an exact science and varies based on environmental factors, including altitude, so you'll want to go a little by feel here and add as much moisture as you need to bring the dough together.

The potatoes should also be smooth rather than lumpy; riced mashed potatoes, rather than ones that are hand-mashed, work best for this recipe. If you have a box of unflavored instant mashed potato flakes, you can also use them in your bread recipe. Just try to use a recipe that specifically calls for them instead of trying to hodgepodge your own.

We're going to tell you like it is here: Making homemade potato gnocchi is a labor of love. But it's a great excuse to pull out your gnocchi board and call over your family and friends to help make this potatoey pasta. The base of this pasta calls for cooked potatoes, though mashed potatoes make a fine substitute.

Combine the mashed potatoes with egg and flour to help bind them, roll them into a log, and cut and shape as you see fit (rolling is optional). After a quick dip in the hot water, your gnocchi will be ready to pair with a tasty sauce; we recommend pesto, but white sauce and red sauce are also options. Additionally, homemade gnocchi benefits from potatoes that have been worked as little as possible. If your spuds are dense and gluey, you may want to reserve them for shepherd's pie rather than try to make gnocchi from them.

The size of the mash itself doesn't matter all that much, though you may want to use peeled potatoes, rather than a rustic mash, to ensure textural continuity and creaminess. Depending on the texture of the mashed potatoes, you may need to add a little more flour. The dough should be easily workable and able to be shaped, though not so sticky that it adheres to your fingers, work surface, and everything you touch.

Potato soup is one of the most forgotten-about recipes out there. It's always chicken noodle this and broccoli cheddar that; when is hearty potato soup going to get its turn? Well, if you have a crock of mashed potatoes waiting to be used up, you may have just given yourself an excuse to make a pot of potato soup at home.

You won't have to worry about waiting for the potatoes to boil then having to pulverize them with an immersion blender like you would for a potato-leek soup. Instead, cook down your aromatics, add your milk or broth, and use your leftover mashed potatoes as a thickener and flavoring in your soup. The soup only needs to cook enough that it thickens up, meaning you could potentially have this soup on the table from start to finish in a half-hour.

Creamy potato soup is excellent served with a slice of crusty bread or a light side salad. You can also give it the baked potato soup treatment by topping it with crumbled bacon, chives, and shredded cheddar cheese. It's bound to join your regular soup rotation — especially when you have tons of leftover mashed potatoes on hand.

Cake is another one of those foods that you probably don't associate with mashed potatoes — but it's never too late to try. Sweet potato brownies are a thing, so why wouldn't the same sentiment apply to their more bland-tasting relatives?

As with the aforementioned potato rolls, adding mashed potatoes to your cake batter increases the moisture and makes it chewier. Now, no one likes biting down onto a piece of potato interspersed with chocolate ganache and chocolate chips, so be sure to break down your mashed potatoes until they're nice and creamy before starting. You can add this ingredient to your recipe with the rest of the wet ingredients — like eggs and vanilla — and prepare your cake as usual; you just may need to alter the dry and wet ingredient ratios to accommodate for the starchy add-in.

You also have to be careful about which recipes you add mashed potatoes to, seeing as fluffy white angel food cake isn't a great match for this admittedly heavy add-in. Chocolate cake is a good place to start because it's fudgy and dense, and the cocoa powder will help disguise any lingering potato flavor. You can also try adding mashed potatoes to brownies to guarantee a moist and decadent bite.

Pierogis are the perfect middle ground for when you can't decide whether you want pasta or mashed potatoes. These Central and Eastern European dumplings are often filled with regional favorites, including mashed potatoes, and are relatively easy to make yourself at home. While you can make your own pierogi dough, grabbing a pack of wonton wrappers from the grocery store will make things 100 times easier.

Add a scoop of mashed potatoes, seasoned to your liking, and fill the circle-cut wrappers with them. You'll want to avoid filling to the edges, as this can cause the wrappers to split open when cooking them. Chive-, butter-, and bacon-mashed potatoes can all work, and you can always boost the flavor of your homemade pierogis by stirring in cooked garlic, onions, or even sauerkraut for added acidity.

Pierogis are best pan-fried and can be served as a quick appetizer or main dish. Try pairing them with a simple butter sauce, or add a dollop of sour cream for both creaminess and tang. You could also serve them with caramelized onions; their subtle sweetness will balance the richness of the mashed potato filling and the sauce. Or go hearty with sauteed kielbasa, pancetta, bacon, or mushrooms. Regardless of how you serve them, these hearty pierogis will make the most of your leftover mashed potatoes.