Kitchen Requirements

5. To me there’s nothing worse than lumpy, gluey potatoes, which is why I always use a potato ricer. I have so many memories of holidays and family dinners when we would take turns putting the hot, freshly drained potatoes through the potato ricer. After lightly stirring in the melted butter and hot milk, we always had beautiful, light, fluffy, lump-free mashed potatoes--a must for any holiday table in our household.

To this day whenever I’m making mashed potatoes I always put the potatoes through the ricer. Ricers are good not only for potatoes but also for vegetables such as sweet potatoes, turnips and rutabagas and for small dumplings like spaetzle. The ricers in the market today usually have several disks with different-sized holes for ricing.