Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Healthified Four-Cheese Mashed Potato Casserole, found over at BettyCrocker.com. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.  

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was my choice, and by “my choice” what I mean is “Fred found it, and I thought it would be a good tandem recipe, so I suggested it to Nance.”

First, you’ve gotta mash your taters. Five pounds of white potatoes, fresh from Publix.

That’s a lot of potatoes. I had decided, after seeing that the recipe had 24 servings, that I would split the casserole into two 8″ square dishes and freeze one of them. But oh-ho-HO, those potatoes had another idea entirely. After I was done peeling potatoes and cutting out the black spots…

“Hmm,” said I. “It’s almost as though I’ve got as much peel and black-spot potato as I’ve got potatoes I can actually use.”

Started out with five pounds of potatoes, able to use a little more than half that. That is a FINE QUALITY PRODUCT, Publix. Awesome! I usually love the shit out of Publix, but this made me want to go on a slappin’ spree. They’re just lucky I wasn’t wearing a bra and didn’t want to put one on to make the trip to Publix to complain.

So I cut the recipe in half.

Boil the potatoes, drain them, and toss them back in the pot.

Mash them.

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have bothered to mash the potatoes at this point.

Oh, and a side note here: I would have preferred to make this recipe using the flaked potatoes that the evil Nance introduced me to, and which are so damn good that I don’t EVEN care that they’re probably made up of chemicals and just the idea of real potatoes. But I wasn’t sure how to make it so that I’d have the correct amount of mashed potatoes. SO what I did, after I’d mashed my potatoes for this recipe was measure how much potato I had, and found that I had 5 cups.

In summary: if you’re making this recipe with instant mashed potatoes, use 5 cups for the half recipe or 10 for the full recipe. YOU’RE WELCOME.

More ingredients:

Reduced-fat Neufchatel, crumbled blue cheese, Parmesan (not pictured), reduced-fat sour cream, reduced-fat cheddar, garlic salt, paprika, fresh chives.

Beat Neufchatel, blue cheese, cheddar, and Parmesan together with an electric beater ’til smooth.

Add in your sour cream and garlic salt.

Now, the original recipe said that you should stir your cheese mixture into your mashed potatoes. I figured that they thought you should do that by hand, and frankly? My thoughts on the topic:

So I threw the potatoes in with the cheese mixture.

The potatoes were a bit stiff, so I added milk, 1 T. at a time, until it was a bit softer. You’ll have to go by your own preferences. I think I added 2 tablespoons of milk, though it might have been more.

Spoon your mashed potatoes into an ungreased glass baking dish. If you’re doing the full recipe, use a 9×13. If you’re doing a half recipe, use an 8×8.

Bake for 35 – 40 minutes, until the top is lightly browned. Sprinkle with paprika and chopped chives.

The verdict? Two thumbs up! I liked it, and Fred liked it even more. I’ll definitely be making this again, though I’ll be using the potato flakes, because if I can possibly make my life easier, I am ALL FOR IT.

It was even better the next day, reheated!

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Dear Robyn,

If you want to eat healthier mashed potatoes  just leave all the cheese out. Or make the other recipe we tried and only eat a tablespoon.  A day.  How would you survive without me?

Sincerely,
Nance

True Confessions:  I did not use Bleu Cheese. I did not use anything fat-free or reduced-fat. I don’t like doctored mashed potatoes. I don’t understand why anybody would want to mess with regular ol’ mashed potatoes because I think they are fabulous just the way they are. Sometimes I wonder if Robyn isn’t drinking alky-haul when she’s picking out recipes.  Or maybe she picked this one because she didn’t want Amanda to get upset again.

If you read my true confessions above (skimmer!), you already know that I didn’t even try and follow the actual recipe. I would rather eat a little bit of something great than a whole lot of something shitty. And nobody can tell me that reduced fat stuff isn’t shitty. Been there, done that, bought the plunger. Shitty, plunger, get it?

Hey, it made me laugh.

The recipe gave me pause when it called for 5 pounds (14 cups) of freaking potatoes.  That seemed like an awful lot of potatoes for a 13 x 9 ” pan.  To me, anyway.  I don’t really know that much about whether or not potatoes shrink when cooked, etc.  And if you fuckers thought I was going to ask Mr. Science and risk the possibility of another mass, volume, blahblahblahblah lecture…um, no. I was also not going to sit around peeling motherfucking potatoes when I have my favorite instant mashed potatoes right in the cupboard. Think of this as the unhealthy, but much easier alternative to Betty Crocker’s™ bullshit healthified recipe.  Yeah, Betty.  I just made you my bitch.

We decided to make the amount on the box that feeds 8 people.  Why?  I don’t know.  Probably because that’s what Rick told me he was making.  He’s in charge of instant mashed potatoes because he does it like a boss.  This is the action shot I took.  Please note that my husband is using a wooden spoon in my non-stick pan.  This is the same man that has the audacity to blame the kids for ruining the pans.  Men.  They’re so silly.

Another action shot! Once I post this I’m going to go see how many dishes/bowls Robyn dirtied to make this goofy recipe. I’m already in for 3 dirty dishes and I didn’t have to use a colander to strain my potatoes – that would have been 4, dammit. If I’m using 4 dishes/bowls there better be cake involved. Tasty, tasty cake. Not to be confused with Tastykake™.  As if.

Pro tip*: Always try to grate your own cheddar if you can. It tastes so much freaking better than that bagged crap.

Imagine there are pictures here of everything else I dumped in because for some reason I didn’t bother snapping any. I guess I got busy.

This is what it looked like when I tossed it into a casserole dish and sprinkled paprika over it. Man, just looking at this picture is making me crave deviled eggs.

Done. We had this with a pork roast and it was good.

Everyone loved it (of course, since it’s a heart attack waitin’ to happen). Weird cropping compliments of the single cat hair on the edge of the plate that I didn’t notice until I was re-sizing pictures. Fucking cats.

*not to be confused with a genuine pro tip because, GET REAL.

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