Kitchen Garden Forum

Well, I use Maris Piper - nothing exciting there. Then I add plenty of butter and sometimes also double cream - again no surprises. But what I tried on impluse the other day was to add wholegrain mustard. Oh wow, this is seriously good. Mind you it would be likely to clash with some things so it's not for every dish. Give it a shot, though.

I'm making coquilles st-jacques this eve and I reckon this mash is going to be brilliant on it.

I use horseradish sauce with my mashed spuds, gives them a great "kick"!

Sounds great, John. I'm all for adding a bit of a "kick"!

What I'm not so keen on is mixing things into some kind of jumble where you can't enjoy the individual ingredients. I was in an "Irish pub" (in Bangkok) and they were serving apple mash with their roast pork. I love mashed tatties and I like apple sauce a lot, but if you mix them together like that you don't get the best out of either ingredient. Some mixes work, of course, but I think not all of them.

I agree with the wholegrain mustard in mash, goes well with sausages! (veggie!!)

Yeah, I usually go for veggie sausages and Cauldron was my favourite brand. But I think they've changed their recipe, the skin was so thin on the last ones I had (my husband eats pork sausages) that the filling had oozed out into the tray they came in, and then they kinda disintegrated when I tried to lift them out. Not nice! I very much doubt if I'd buy again, despite having liked these for years.

I used to make my own sausages - and might do again if we ever get our stuff back from Kyiv - I don't see why I couldn't have a go at making veggie/vegan ones. Not sure what to do about the skins, though. I used "natural" skins, which probably means some part of an animal's intestines.

Good suggestion on adding mustard & horseradish to mash spuds.

As for sausages er indoors likes beef ones which seem to have vanished.

Rather than wasting money on sausage & mash we now do it without the sausages.

In ye olden days if I was making mash I'd peel the spuds. Now I don't bother. I just cut up the tatties and boil them. I peel the skins off after they're cooked. Easier, quicker, less waste, and it makes better mash anyway.

Wont they be to hot to touch?

The best mash is made from jacket potatoes, cook your baked tatties as normal slowly in an oven, when ready cut in half remove the inners and add whatever you add to your mash, then pile them back into the skins.

Colin, yes they are rather hot to touch (and I don't have asbestos fingers) so I usually just wait a little while until they're not too hot to handle. It works for me.

Tiger, oh yes, I love these "twice-baked potatoes". One of my favourites is a smoked haddock filling. Delicious! M&S used to sell a range of twice-bakeds which you just had to heat up in the microwave. I used to buy them for lunch when I worked in Embra (Edinburgh), but that was back in the early 1980s.