Homemade Vegan Mashed Potato Recipes

Who doesn’t love a creamy bowl of mashed potato? And it’s perfectly possible to make it, using oat milk and vegan butter (with no palm oil).

This 5-ingredient (vegan) mashed potato recipe (Broke Bank Vegan) is a simple recipe, to serve with a veggie roast. Potatoes are mixed with olive oil (or rapeseed) oil, plant milk, nutritional yeast and and salt/pepper.

Read up on food safety for people and pets. Bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, chives, shallot, leeks), as acids could harm compost creatures.

If giving pets the odd mashed potato treat, only feed plain mash potato (no butter, salt, garlic, herbs). Same with garden birds and wildfowl (salt is toxic and fat could smear on feathers, affecting waterproofing & insulation).

Which Potatoes are Best for Mash?

Yukon Gold are good for creamy buttery mash
Maris Piper again go creamy when cooked
Russet give extra fluffy spuds, but can be gluey if over-mashed
Red potatoes are heavier, chunky and slightly sweet

Avoid waxy potatoes (Jersey royals, Charlotte, new potatoes) as they have low starch so won’t break down, and you’ll end up with sticky or lumpy mash.

Warm your plant milk and vegan butter: Mixing cold milk into hot potatoes cools the whole bowl and can make the potatoes gluey.

When buying potatoes, look for smooth skins with few blemishes or sprouts, and feel firm when you pick them up. Green patches means the spuds have been exposed to light, and could taste bitter.

Always keep green and sprouting potatoes away from children and pets.

For a protein-rich change, try this butter bean mash (The Vegan Space). Lovely with vegan sausages, or as a topping for a veggie shepherd’s pie.

Good Grips Potato Masher is good for people with arthritis hands, and can also be used to mash other vegetables like swede. It costs around £10, but should last you a lifetime.

Creamy Mash (with peas & carrots)

This creamy mash with peas and carrots (Ela Vegan) is made with fresh carrots, peas, sweetcorn, cauliflower, garlic and onions. The creamy sauce is made with oat cream and spiced with pepper, chilli flakes and Dijon mustard.

What About Instant Mash Potato Mix?

Many students and others choose to buy instant mash potato mix. It’s not very healthy (a mix of dehydrated potato with salt and chemicals) but it does kind of taste okay, but it’s pretty easy to make homemade mash.

In the USA, people can buy Bob’s Red Mill Potato Flakes that also make instant mash, by mixing with boiling water. But this time, they are made with just one ingredient: potatoes.

The History of Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes are actually native to the Andes (not Ireland!) where the Incas relied on them to survive poor soil and tough weather. They only arrived in Europe in the late 1500s, when Spanish explorers brought them back, and they took off!

At the time, nobody had seen potatoes, and some people were scared of the humble spud. But soon their mild taste was being used to make cheap nutritious meals, and it’s been that way ever since.

While we enjoy mashed potatoes in England, they are also very popular in other countries: