Simply Add Store-Bought French Onion Sauce to Your Mashed Potatoes
Every year, as I develop exciting new content for Thanksgiving, I try to bridge the line between “wow, this is amazingly delicious” and “she’s a crazy woman who needs to be stopped.” This leads to praise (from the people who are already on board with my bullshit), but it also generates a lot of holiday cheers.
Shouting is how I know I’m doing something right. Thanksgiving has such a standard locked menu that you have to play with the details so that we don’t all die of boredom. This is why you should add French onion sauce to your mashed potatoes.
I’m not talking about the fancy homemade onion sauce ; I don’t even mean the ones you find in the fridge with cream cheese and sour cream. I’m talking about a canola oil-based beige sauce that comes in a glass jar that is so completely emulsified and shelf stable that it wiggles a little when it comes out of the container. With little pieces of onion like McDonald’s . The one with MSG . (Lay’s does good.)
Haters will say I’m a troll, but store-bought French onion sauce does make some really crazy mashed potatoes. Just like my mayonnaise mashed potatoes before them, the emulsified buttery product helps combine the hydrophilic with the hydrophobic, creating a velvety creamy bowl of chicken legs with a surprisingly subtle onion flavor and ample umami.
No one will bite off and ask, “What the hell ?? They taste like Lay’s onion sauce! “No, it won’t. Instead, they’ll eat a spoon, pause, come back for more, and then ask you what your secret ingredient is. They’ll ask you how that mashed potato came about, so savory, so soft and so damn delicious. But you will never tell. (Or maybe you will. Personally, I don’t know how to keep secrets.)
You can add French Onion Sauce to any mashed potato recipe at a quarter cup sauce for every pound of potatoes, but you really don’t need a lot of other ingredients. Enough potatoes, butter and sauce for a great batch of masher. To make them you will need:
- 2 lb. russet, gold-colored Yukon potatoes or mix
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into 8 parts
- 1/2 cup French Onion Sauce (Lay’s preferred)
Peel the potatoes and cut into 1/2-inch cubes. Cook them in a large saucepan of salted water until easy to mash with a fork. Drain the potatoes in a colander. Reduce heat to medium-low and return potatoes to saucepan, cook and stir for a few minutes to remove excess water. Stir in some mashed potatoes (or use mashed potatoes for waxy potatoes), then add butter. Continue stirring until the butter has melted, then add the sauce. Stir in the puree, then stir with a wooden spoon until the potatoes are smooth and uniform in color.