Cutting and Cooking Whipped Potatoes

Shannon Overmiller: Hello! My name is Shannon Overmiller I am the Executive Chef at the Majestic in Old Town, Alexandria. Today we are making home style meatloaf. While we baked the meatloaf which previously showed you how to mix and bake the meatloaf. We will make the side dishes while the meatloaf is baking. Right now we are going to go into making the whipped potatoes for the meatloaf. What you need for the whipped potatoes is going to be 6 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled. I like to use Yukon Gold potatoes as it's much better potato than say for -- for whipping it's a better potato. The starch level is more accurate for whipping rather than an Idaho Potato which will be better for making French fries something of that nature. It's much better to use a waxier potato like this or Red Bliss is as good as well. So we got our peeled Yukon Gold potatoes. You want to cut these into uniform sizes, in uniform chunks. You want to put the potatoes once cut into a large pot and just to cover the potatoes. Don't over submerge them, don't drown them in water as you want to always use whenever cooking potatoes or starches, cold water. Just to cover. To this you want to add salt. You want the water to taste like salt water. It's going to have a very good amount of salt in it and the way to do that is just to taste it. So this is cold water and I am now going to season salt generously. You really want it to taste like the sea. Bring this up to a boil. It takes about 15-20 minutes, usually once it is up to boil and then you bring it back down to simmer. It takes up 15-20 minutes and then you want to test it with a fork. That will give you -- once it yields to the fork and it breaks apart gently but overcooked and I will show that's when you know your potatoes are ready. And while we are doing this, since now this is how you start to whip potatoes. Now a good thing to do while your whip potatoes or cooking is to start your meatloaf gravy as well.