Mashed Potatoes Are 10x More Flavorful When You Add This Sharp Condiment

You really don't need a mashed potato recipe when you know the basic ratios, with perhaps a few extras up your sleeve to zhuzh 'em up. Butter and salt are the most common — and practically required — flavor enhancers, and little additions like roasted garlic can make basic mashed potatoes considerably tastier from there. The Dijon mustard that you might already have somewhere in the kitchen is a similarly small addition with an outsized impact that you can factor into your next batch of mashed spuds.

Dijon has way more versatile uses than as a marginally fancy hot dog topping. That's why you'll find it swirled into so many marinades, pan sauces, and vinaigrettes. Pop open a jar, and you'll get a whiff of its sharp scent; a tiny taste will reveal its wine-like tang and slightly spicy punch. This is to say that once you've tried Dijon mustard for the first time, you probably aren't ever going to mistake it for any other kind. Those qualities remain present even buried in the clouds of mashed potatoes, helping cut through all that buttery richness of the spuds and providing a sharp, zesty layer of depth. And once you sort out your proportions, you'll be able to enjoy this easy upgrade in countless mashed spuds to come.

Feel free to dust off whatever mashed potato ratio or recipe you'd like for this slight adaptation, but remember that any strong flavors might obscure, or worse, compete with the Dijon. That aforementioned roasted garlic may sound nice with Dijon mustard, for example, but it is bound to overpower the condiment and become more prominent in the mashed potatoes. And you might want to omit anything particularly acidic; the mustard has plenty of that bite on its own. Then, all you need is about a tablespoon of Dijon per pound of potatoes, like russets or Yukon Golds, and some good timing.

Nothing ruins mashed potatoes faster than overmixing. All it takes are a few too many turns to transform those tubers from as fluffy or as creamy as intended, to a tacky, gluey mess. So adding extras like Dijon mustard in the beginning will save you from risking overmixing the condiment into the spuds later down the line. Make sure to taste your mashed potatoes halfway through your mashing, well before it's all smooth, too. This will give you time to incorporate more mustard, or any additional condiment, seasoning, or other little improvement, early on in the process.