Hello! My name is Shannon Overmiller. I’m the executive chef at The Majestic in Old Town Alexandria.

Today we’re making home style meatloaf. While we bake the meatloaf which I previously showed you how to mix and bake the meatloaf, we will make the side dishes while the meatloaf is baking. And right now we are going to into making the whipped potatoes for the meatloaf. With the potatoes once they reach the consistency that you desire, as I said they yield to a fork, but not too much. So you see it still holds but it can come apart, it will break. That’s the consistency you want. Yes, see that fell apart. But it’s not _____.

So now what you do is you take your potatoes, get a strainer. And then you simply pour your potatoes into the colander. So after the potatoes have come out of the water. Then you want to put them into a ricer or some sort of mechanism to make them more fine. They have hand held potato ricers, as well. What we use at the restaurant a little bigger scale. Something underneath to catch the potato as it comes through. This is called a ricer, as I said, they have little hand held ones that’s just like a clamp almost like a garlic press that you can use. And you put your potatoes into that, and squeeze it. That’s more designed for home. With this, then you take your potatoes, and they go through the mechanism.

At this stage, your potatoes have been put through the ricer, and you want to go back into the pot at this stage. The pot that you cooked the potatoes in. No water, of course. This process is called drying the potatoes out after they’ve been riced , put them back into the pot, on a low heat, just to release the steam out of the potatoes. And as I said, this will help to insure a fluffier, smoother whipped potato. This is a whipped potato, not a mashed potato. It’s a difference. If you mash them it’s fine to do it at home, as well. It just have a heavier texture, more lumps, but this is a classic whipped potato. At this point, you’ve reached the nice, smooth consistency in your potato. And the steam is now being released out. it’s pretty much gone so, I’m pretty much there.

At this stage, this is where I want to turn off the heat. Now, I will add to my potatoes, butter, cool not freezing cold but room temperature I mean cold butter. And heavy cream. And salt. Generous salting potatoes, it needs it, it really needs it. Potatoes are beautiful thing, just have to treat them right. So good, with just salt, a little nutmeg for your potatoes, just a pinch. Don’t go crazy with it, you don’t want to taste nutmeg but you want to accent, a hint of it. And now you fold in your, as we showed you earlier, fold in your mixture. Off the heat, no fire now. So that was the whipped potatoes. And now we’ll finish the gravy.