Thursday, November 23, 2017

What am I grateful for? Crock-Pot Mashed Potatoes! by Jenn McKInlay

No, I'm not kidding. I am so grateful for Crock-Pot mashed potatoes. For those of you who've been tasked with cooking the big dinner, you know what I'm talking about. Timing is everything when you want all the hot food served hot and when you get a deranged bird that finishes cooking an hour early (or late), it all goes to heck in a cornucopia and the cook is left to cry into her cooking sherry, alone in the kitchen, while everyone else watches football and drinks the good stuff. 

Hosting Thanksgiving is WAY stressful so when I discovered a few years ago that I could make the mashed potatoes in a Crock-Pot and free up stove space and have one less thing to time, well, hallelujah and pass the pumpkin pie.

Here's the recipe so you can be grateful to: 

Crock-Pot Mashed Potatoes:


5 lbs. potatoes, chopped and boiled until tender (skins optional)
8 oz. container sour cream
8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
salt and pepper to taste


Preparation:


Mash potatoes with sour cream and cream cheese, adding spoonfuls of the leftover water from boiling the potatoes (I like to add a Tablespoon of minced garlic to the water when boiling the potatoes -- for flavor) to reach desired consistency. Transfer to a Crock-pot, cover, and cook on low for 2 to 3 hours. Just before serving, stir in butter and season with salt and pepper.




Now, Reds and readers, tell me one ridiculous thing you are grateful for and, yes, it has to be on the level of mashed potatoes. We don't want to get overly sentimental here, except, I will say that I am grateful for all of you. I have found some amazing new authors, made fabulous new friends, and learned all sorts of crazy stuff in the months I've been a Red, and I am ever grateful. XO






Happy Thanksgiving! 

42 comments:

  1. Happy Thanksgiving . . . I hope everyone has a lovely holiday.
    Around here, we have so many things to be thankful for [not the least of which is a three-and-a-half-month-new grandbaby] . . .

    Crock Pot mashed potatoes, huh? That’s good to know, and the recipe sounds yummy.
    My “I’m thankful for” that’s on the level of mashed potatoes is stuffing mix. Why? Because I absolutely detest bread stuffing and never eat it . . . but everyone else in our family loves it, so I expect there would be disappointed faces if the stuffing didn’t show up on the dinner table. A package of stuffing mix means I don’t need to make it from scratch and I can concentrate on all the other things that everyone enjoys with their turkey . . . .

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    1. Hi, Joan! I love stuffing but I actually prefer it from the box so we're a good pair!

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  2. Love the idea of using a crock pot on Thanksgiving, except I don't have one! I'm grateful for canned pumpkin pie filling. Every time I make one from a real squash or pumpkin, it's just not the same. So I make a fabulous from-scratch buttering pie crust - and then use the canned filling plus double spices. Two are waiting on the counter right now! Also so grateful for the Reds and this wonderful commenter community.

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    1. I am thankful (not on the mashed potato level, but on the finding a shiny penny level) for your canned pumpkin pie filling, Edith. A memory of my mother -- I was 4 or 5 the year she was tasked with bringing a pumpkin pie to her mother-in-law's Thanksgiving Dinner. She asked the wonderful farmer's wife at the farm stand which pumpkin to buy. "Ah," that farmer's wife said, "Libby's in the can." As little as I was, I felt Mother's instant relief. Thank you, Edith.

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    2. My grandfather was the pie baker, and his pumpkin pie was superb. One year I asked him to teach me his secret, and he solemnly swore to share the sacred family recipe for pumpkin pie with me. Then he picked up a can of Libby's and pointed to the label.

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    3. Love the Libby's!!! I can't imagine doing all that work from scratch.

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    4. Mark Bittman's pie crust!! Butter, butter, butter.

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    5. Are we talking about canned pumpkin or canned pumpkin pie filling?
      Libby Dodd

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    6. Libby, about 65 years since that conversation between the farmer's wife and Mother, so I just don't remember, even if I ever knew. Apple was the pie of choice at our home -- only my grandmother served the pumpkin. I think Mother have baked it that year because Nana had been ill.

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    7. Canned pumpkin - to which I add the milk, spices, and eggs. Yum!

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  3. From Canada, I am grateful for online communities like the Reds. Such a great bunch of smart writers and super women. Thank you all from the actual Reds through to every last commenter. Enjoy your big U.S. holiday today!

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    1. Thank you and happy belated Canadian Thanksgiving to you!

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  4. Happy Thanksgiving all Reds! Jenn those potatoes look evilly good:). Aside from all of you and family and friends, I'm so grateful to be a reader! My life would be so sad without piles of books everywhere in my house. (And thankful for my cafe con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen this morning too:)

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  5. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And yum, I am grateful for any kind of mashed potatoes.the baby children are all coming ( though the youngest is seven now) and the table is already set with thanksgiving plates and red roses and candles—off to put in the turkey! ( so I am super grateful for my oven! ). Wish you all were here!! Xxxxxxxx

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    1. Sounds like fun, Hank! Good luck with the bird!

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    2. We will have two actual babies -- one is 19 months and the other is 15 months. I guess they are toddlers, but they will always be the babies in our family.

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  6. I am thankful for cheap, simple arch supports. I was always a barefoot girl, and believed that going barefoot over a variety of surfaces would keep my foot muscles strong and my arches arched. Alas, age comes to all the lucky survivors of youthful indiscretion. Now, if I go barefoot for too long, my flat right foot pulls my knee out of alignment, and messes with my hips and back. Cheap arch supports to the rescue! I'm not saying I can manage a marathon with them, but I can certainly manage a long day of complex cooking.

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  7. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

    I'm especially thankful for family members who are all good cooks. This year, everyone, including my 12-year old grandson, is making something for the feast (Zak is sauteing haricots vert on the stove). My husband is smoking the wild turkey he shot on our farm back in the spring, and I'll be making a pecan pie, crqnberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Daughters are making other pies and salad, and appetizers, and sons-in-law are making mac and cheese and the roast turkey breast. And coffee. Lots of coffee!

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  8. Happy Thanksgiving to all! I'm particularly grateful for my extended family today, and for this community that you've created and nurtured. As Lucy Roberta said, I'm grateful to be a reader, and also for all the nice connections it's led me to. On the mashed-potato level, I'm grateful for our younger son's sweet-potato casserole, with a dollop of maple syrup and pecan crust. None today, unfortunately, but I'm looking forward to having it at Christmas.

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    1. Pecan crust? I have to go google that! Yum!

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    2. Oohh Jim, I just finished my sweet potato casserole with that exact crust. Can't wait to try it!

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  9. I'm grateful for Whole Foods. We're having an untraditional celebration today, but we'll be able to have a "do over" once we're home, thanks to WF prepared food (you didn't think I was cooking, did you?!.

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    1. LOL! Enjoy your untraditional holiday and you belated one, Ingrid!

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  10. In years gone by, I would have been cranky if my husband brought home a bag of ready to steam green beans. But I am over it!! I am grateful that my husband loves to shop for bargains at the grocery store. Yesterday he discovered the grocery section of Target and has fallen in love. He brought four more pounds of butter! (It freezes.) I don't care!

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  11. I'm grateful for the Reds and Jenn's mashed taters (coming soon to a crock pot near me) and because I'm on vacation and this is Florida, I'm grateful that hubs is mesquite smoking steaks on the grill for dinner tonight!

    Happy Thanksgiving all.

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  12. I'm grateful to my hubby for sharpening ALL my knives last night, so that I can slice and dice like a pro. I'm grateful to my daughter for leaving pumpkin chocolate chip bread on my porch this morning (and, yes, it was as good as it sounds. Toasted, with butter. Hey, it's Thanksgiving.)

    I'm grateful for Jenn's mashed potato recipe, which is brilliant and is going in my crock pot in just a bit.

    I'm grateful for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

    Happy Thanksgiving, all!!!!!!!!!!!!

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    1. And the dog show after the parade? Delectable

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  13. I’m thankful that I bothered to check the pies and found I’d set the oven at 170. Don’t ask. Praying I can salvage them.
    I’m thankful for my friends here who keep me supplied with endless things to read, who make me laugh and cry. Xox

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  14. To list all the things I'm grateful for would take the rest of the day. On the level of crockpot mashed potatoes, I am grateful for my garlic press. I just finished making the herbed cream cheese ball that my relatives love for the holidays, and it's such an easy thing to do with that garlic press. It's easy to clean, too!

    DebRo

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  15. I'm happy that the local Wegmans grocery store had butternut squash already peeled and cut into chunks. I don't care if it's more expensive or the lazy way out -- I hate peeling and cutting hard squash, but love eating it. And I'm grateful that my brother and his son-in-law decided to smoke the turkeys this year so I don't have to cook one. Boy, am I lazy this year! And I'm very grateful for the Reds community.

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    1. Happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for Weggies too.

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  16. I’m grateful for Stove Top Stuffing. I add onion, mushrooms, celery and chestnuts too it. Everyone likes it and it saves me a lot of time.

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  17. I'm grateful my husband is smoking the turkey. I'm grateful for gravy in a jar.

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  18. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone here on the Jungle Reds blog! I have been so busy all week, but especially yesterday and today. And, Jenn, one of the food items that I'm grateful for is also mashed potatoes. I hate making them the day of, and thanks to author Kristi Belcamino, I can now make them ahead. Kristi says that her family always wants her to bring the mashed potatoes for holidays, and now I see why. I used her recipe, with her messaging me information about a question I had, and my family loved the potatoes. I made them yesterday, before both children, a son-in-law, grandchildren, and husband arrived. For years, I have had a local barbecue restaurant cook turkey breasts for me, drop them off and pick them up, then slice. They aren't bar-b-que tasting, just a little smoked. I buy green beans at yet another restaurant, because they are delicious, and everyone in my family will eat them, and I can buy them ahead. I sometimes do an asparagus casserole instead, but I decided it was too time consuming this year. I had rolls to put in the oven. All I had to do to finish my part of the meal was to make scalloped oysters this morning and put the mashed potatoes in the oven to warm. My mother-in-law made the dressing, gravy, and salad. My daughter made the pumpkin pies. Oh, and I brought the cranberry roll. It was such a wonderful Thanksgiving. I think the thing I was most grateful for was the my daughter and son were both here last night, and our whole family slept under one roof, which doesn't happen very often.

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  19. I used my crockpot for the first time this year to cook and keep the stuffing warm! I never stuff my bird, and it just takes up space in the oven when there are so many more important things to fit in there. Except, when I put everything on the table, I forgot about the stuffing in the lone crockpot in the other room. And, no one mentioned the absence of stuffing...didn't realize it until we were cleaning up and someone noted a hot crockpot on the kitchen counter.

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  20. Speaking of crockpots.......how about 5 of them in service yesterday! Crock pot #1:Hot spiced cider, Crock pot #2: Make ahead mashed potatoes, Crockpot #3:stuffing, Crockpot #4: extra bone-in Turkey breast to augment the main event Turkey, Mini Crockpot #5: keeping gravy warm. Grateful for how much easier this makes things while feeding a big family!

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