Pressure Cooker Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Pressure Cooker Garlic Mashed Potatoes! Ready in about 30 minutes, start to finish. Perfect mashed potatoes every time.

After making mashed potatoes every kind of way, these days, it’s all about the electric pressure cooker. The potatoes come out perfectly every time, and it’s so, so fast!

Whether you’re making mashed potatoes for a weeknight dinner or a big holiday spread, this is my favorite method for a perfect bowl of spuds.

To ensure that the potatoes cook evenly, I peel and cut them into 1-inch slices. Cut this way, I’ve found that they always take exactly four minutes to cook under pressure, and they always steam perfectly. (Heads up that the pot will take 15 minutes or so to heat up before the actual cooking begins, but the total cook time is still less than 20 minutes from start to finish. )

I’ve included a few cloves of garlic in my mashed potatoes – they soften up and you can mash right in. Four cloves might sound like a lot, but potatoes are such a blank slate, so this gives the whole dish a nice garlicky flavor.

You can definitely tweak the amounts of milk, butter, and salt to make these mashed potatoes as creamy as you like. The proportions I use here make the potatoes taste buttery, but they’re not overly rich – my favorite.

Serve your mashed potatoes with a holiday turkey or roast, or a weeknight dinner of Salisbury steak or meatloaf. I bet you will up making them more often with this easy method!

Pressure Cooker Garlic Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup water
3 to 3 1/2 pounds (4 large) russet potatoes, peeled and sliced 1-inch thick
4 cloves garlic, peeled
3/4 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Chopped fresh chives or parsley, for garnish (optional)

Method

1 Pressure cook the potatoes and garlic: Place a steamer basket in the bottom of your electric pressure cooker and add 1 cup of water. Add the sliced potatoes and peeled garlic cloves on top of the steamer basket.

Secure the lid on your pressure cooker and make sure the pressure release valve is set to its “sealing” position. Select the “Steam” or “Manual” setting and set the cooking time to 4 minutes at high pressure. (The pot will take about 15 minutes to come up to pressure and then the actual cooking will begin).

When the cooking program ends, perform a quick release by moving the pressure release valve to its “venting” position.

2 Drain the water from the pot, then put the potatoes and garlic back in: Use heatproof mitts to remove the steamer basket from the pot. Lift out the inner pot and pour out the water, then return the potatoes to the inner pot of the pressure cooker (don’t put it back in the pressure cooker housing).

Mash the potatoes, then taste for seasoning: Add the milk, butter, salt, and pepper. Use a potato masher to work the ingredients into the potatoes, mashing until the potatoes are mashed as much as you like them. Add more milk or butter if you like. Taste the potatoes for seasoning, and add more salt and/or pepper if needed.