I get excited every Thanksgiving when Food Network comes out with their annual Thanksgiving Live show. Food Network personalities answer questions and share recipes for the big turkey day. I try to find a couple recipes that I am interested in trying myself. One recipe that peeked my interest was Bobby Flay’s Smoked Paprika Mashed Potatoes. He was going for a Mediterranean theme for this Thanksgiving meal this year, so Spanish Smoked Paprika
1. For experimentation purposes I halved the recipe in case I didn’t like, didn’t want to waste any ingredients.
2. Watch the time on cooking the potatoes. You don’t want to overcook them, so check them often. Mine cooked faster since I only had half the potatoes.
3. You could use a food mill or a ricer for this recipe. I went with the food mill this time. When you use a food mill you don’t have to peel the potatoes, the skin don’t pass through the food mill. So I didn’t understand why Bobby said to peel the potatoes first. They came out fine with no skins by just running them through the mill.
4. Choose a quality smoked paprika. The one I had was sweet (as it wasn’t very spicy) and had a lovely smokey flavor.
5. Any recipe that calls for chives I will leave them out, I just don’t like them.
6. What you need to be more careful with is adding the dairy. I found I didn’t need hardly as much as half a recipe would suggest. Before you go and dump it all it, which you are suppose to be adding slowly, don’t assume you will need all that dairy.
The color of these potatoes was striking, definitely something to get people talking around the Thanksgiving table. Again watch the dairy as I felt my potatoes could have been thicker, would reduce both the milk/cream combo and the butter next time. The flavor was outstanding. The smoked paprika goes really well, it adds a level of flavor I never thought of adding before but certainly glad I did. I would say it’s worth a try in your household.
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