Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes
Mashed potato is butter-and-cream territory by default, but the Mediterranean version — whipped instead with good olive oil — is in many ways the better dish. It is lighter, more savoury, glossier, and far harder to ruin into the gluey paste that overworked buttery mash becomes. The trick is mostly about the oil and how you add it.
Why oil beats butter here
Butter is mostly water and milk solids; olive oil is pure fat with flavour of its own. Whipped into hot potato it coats the starch and gives a silky, almost mayonnaise-like gloss without the heaviness of cream. Crucially, oil does not encourage the same overworked gluiness — you can beat olive-oil mash a little more freely than butter mash before it turns to paste, though restraint still pays. And the oil brings its own savour: a fruity, peppery extra virgin makes the potato taste of something, not just of dairy. It is the lighter, more grown-up cousin of the classic mash.
How to make it well
Start with a floury, mashing potato, and crucially get them dry — drain well and let the steam blow off, because wet potato dilutes the oil and turns the mash slack. Mash or rice them while hot, then beat in good extra virgin olive oil in a steady stream, more generously than you would butter, until glossy and rich. Season hard with salt; potato needs it. A little warm milk or the cooking water can loosen it if needed, but the oil does most of the work. Finish, as ever, with a last raw drizzle on top for aroma.
Use a sound, fruity everyday extra virgin for the body of the mash, then save a spoonful of your best bottle for the drizzle on top, where its aroma survives un-heated. And warm the oil slightly — or at least don’t add it fridge-cold — so it blends smoothly into the hot potato. Cold oil seizes the mash; warm oil melts in.
A Mediterranean home-cooking method, described from common practice.