How I Make Frugal Convenience Mashed Potatoes in My Instant Pot

We love the super-convenient mashed potatoes you can buy in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Mashed potatoes are the perfect side for a lot of our favorite meals, and it's just nice to have some we can easily reheat and serve without doing the whole cooking thing :-)

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And they're not expensive, necessarily, but I realized that I can make my own (better) mashed potatoes for much less money, and I've been pretty conscious of saving money on groceries where I can. So I've taken to whipping up (get it? haha...) big batches in my Instant Pot when I have some spare time, and freezing them in quart-sized freezer bags. Then I can just pull out a bag or two and reheat them when we want them! 

I estimate that the same amount of potatoes costs about a third to a half of the price when I make them at home as opposed to buying them premade. And it only takes a half an hour, most of which is passive so I can be doing other things in the meantime. :-) 

I like my mashed potatoes with red or yukon gold potatoes, because I think the textures lend themselves well to whipping and staying fluffy. When I'm making just one batch ahead of a meal, I choose one color, but for these big batches, I go for both. I grab a 5lb bag of each color and use about half and half in each batch.

You can easily adapt your favorite mashed potato recipe to this process, but here's the basic procedure.

Wash, peel, and cut-up about 3lbs of potatoes into roughly equal chunks. (This is all my stand mixer can handle at a time, so I work in three batches when I buy 10lbs of potatoes.)

Drop them in the steel pot in the Instant Pot.

Add a cup of water (or other liquid, like chicken broth).

Set your Instant Pot: manual, high pressure, 7 minutes. (Don't forget to make sure the valve is turned to "sealing."

After the Instant Pot gets up to pressure, the 7 minutes will begin. At the end of those 7 minutes, your Instant Pot will beep. This whole step will take around 15-20 minutes of hands-off time, so stick close, but you can do other stuff. Like dishes. Or Instagram. :-) 

When the Instant Pot beeps that the 7 minutes are up, do a quick release. If you're not familiar with the quick release, it can be a little intimidating. I jump every time, but it IS supposed to hiss, and steam IS supposed to pour out of it! When the steam has stopped and the little valve indicator floats, it's safe to open your Instant Pot.

That steel pot is HOT, so instead of pulling it out and dumping my potatoes into a colander, I just use a slotted spoon to dig the potatoes out and drop them into the bowl of my stand mixer. 

**If you have a hand mixer, you can TOTALLY make this a one-dish thing. I don't.**

From there, this is where it gets really customizable - make the potatoes however you usually do! (I know some people use combinations of milk, cream, salt, butter, cream cheese, sour cream, etc...) My standard is a stick of margarine for 3lb potatoes, and a TBSP or two of milk, added slowly until the potatoes reach a consistency I like. (The diet coke doesn't go in the potatoes, but it does go into the cook. Often.)

Scoop servings of potatoes into quart-size freezer bags - I use my ginormous Mama Bear mug to hold the bag steady and open while I work. :-)

Squeeze air out of the bag, flatten and spread potatoes out, and place flat in the freezer until hard. Once they're frozen solid, the bags can stand up or be shoved into random corners of the freezer. :-) 

I pull one or two out at a time and run a little warm water over the bag so I can remove the potato blob for thawing or reheating. You can put a frozen blob in a bowl in the fridge to thaw overnight, or just plan on microwaving a little bit longer. Microwave, covered, for 2 minutes. Remove, stir, recover, and continue to reheat for a minute at a time (stirring after each minute) until heated all the way through. Enjoy your easy, convenient, AND inexpensive side dish!

PS: If you love cooking ahead, I've reviewed some of our favorite freezer meals that I stashed while I was pregnant. :-)

PPS: If you have an Instant Pot that you love and are looking for great recipes for, I have a new-ish Pinterest board that I've been adding some delicious-looking recipes to, and making notes on them as I try them out.

PPPS: If you don't have an Instant Pot, you probably need one. ;-)