Hi. I'm Miranda with Recipe.com and, today, I'm gonna show you how to make Mashed Potatoes. Now, this simple side dish is such a classic and such a favorite, and as you'll see, really, really easy to do. So I have all of our ingredients laid out here. We're starting with 1-1/2 pounds of baking potatoes such as russet or Yukon gold and they have been washed, peeled, and quartered. I have them right here. We're gonna use 3 to 5 tablespoons of milk. I've used 5 just because I like my mashed potatoes to be nice and creamy. We also have 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter. We have a half of a teaspoon of salt and then just a little pinch of pepper that we're gonna use over here to taste. So, I've got water in this medium saucepan over here and it's already started to-- to heat. I'm going to add my potatoes right now and then I'm gonna bring them to a boil, and we're gonna let this boil covered for about 20 to 25 minutes until our potatoes are nice and tender and ready to mash. Also gonna add our salt in now. We're gonna salt the water. Pop this on, and now we're going to let it boil for 20 to 25 minutes and we'll check it. You can always do the fork test: insert a fork to see if it's tender. If it is, you know you're ready to go. It's been 20 minutes and our potatoes are nice and soft, so I've drained them and put them into this bowl because I'm gonna mix everything together, so I'm using a potato masher today but you could also use a hand mixer. I would caution against ever putting it in a blender or a food processor, or even using your hand mixer on too high. Potatoes are so high in starch that they can actually become like gluey really, really quickly. You can't overprocess a potato, so just keep that in mind. So when you're working with a small amount like this, I find that a potato masher works just fine. So we're just gonna start and just kind of break it up a little bit, mash, mash, mash. This doesn't have to be perfect yet. We're just starting-- starting the mashing process. And now we're gonna add in the butter, so let's pop our butter in here, and you'll definitely wanna make sure that you're doing this, you know, right after the potatoes have been drained because, you know, obviously, the heat and the steam from the potatoes are-- was going to melt our butter here, and now it's time to add in a little bit more salt and pepper. This is to taste. You remember that we boiled our potatoes using the salted water and so now this is just to taste. I happen to like my mashed potatoes with quite a bit of salt, but that's different for everyone, so you just do however much you like. Just remember that you could always add more but you can't take any out so maybe don't be too heavy-handed if you're not sure what your preference is yet. And just mix, mix, mix. So it's starting to get nice and light and fluffy so we can add in the milk. Now, a note about milk. You wanna make sure that you use-- not cold milk. If you can use at least room temperature or warm milk, that's better. If you use cold milk, it will react with the starch and also give you kind of that glue difficult texture. I've learned that the hard way, a long time ago, so definitely you wanna use some-- some warm milk or room temperature if you can. It's just a little trick to make it a bit easier for you. So we're just gonna add it in, in sections so I'm just gonna do kind of half right now, just drizzle, and mash it up, and then the remaining little bit, and once you have this recipe down, you'll be able to customize it to your, you know, heart's content. You could add in pesto. You could do roasted garlic. You can even add salsa into mashed potatoes. There are so many things, but once you have this recipe down, you are good to go. There you go, creamy, delicious, the perfect quintessential side dish, that's how you make Basic Mashed Potatoes. Thanks for watching, and for more great recipes and savings, visit us at Recipe.com.