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Making Mashed Potatoes For a Crowd? (Here's How Much You Actually Need)
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Apr 25, 2024
Mashed potatoes are a crowd favorite when it comes to just about any holiday, family get together, or party, but no one wants to make too little or too much. Or even worse, spend more money than you need to. I'll explain exactly how many pounds of mashed potatoes you'll need for 10, 15, 20, 25, and even 30 people.
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I have a crock pot behind me. I have a stock pot, a rather large stock pot, full of boiling water
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And that is my dog, Tuli. Don't mind her. Okay, so you're wondering, how much mashed potatoes do I
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actually need per person? And whether you're having a Thanksgiving dinner, a get-together
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or maybe just a family dinner with a couple people, how much mashed potatoes do you actually
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need for that amount of people? So this is what 10 pounds of prepared mashed potatoes looks like
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and that is the amount you need for 20 people. So obviously, you can see this is a giant
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salad bowl, and it pretty much fills it up. So that's quite a large amount of mashed potatoes
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For 25 people, we're going to need 12.5 pounds. So let's add enough to make that amount in this
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bowl. All right, there you have it. That's enough for 25 people. It's 12.5 pounds, so you're probably
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getting really close or more to the amount of mashed potatoes here that you would serve for
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like a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner, especially if you're having like a lot of people
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over. So for 30 people, you're going to need a whopping 15 pounds of mashed potatoes. So let's add
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that into this bowl and see what the grand finale looks like. All right, so this is what 15 pounds
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of mashed potatoes looks like for 30 people. Now, this is a really great option if you're looking to
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save some money, especially getting the instant mashed potatoes, because for this amount of mashed
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potatoes, it was like a little over four dollars for me to buy at Winco. Of course, that can always
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change depending on where you're shopping. I know other stores like Albertsons and Fred Meyer that I
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looked at really didn't have the option to buy mashed potatoes in bulk, so they had smaller boxes
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So I would have had to buy more boxes, and it was definitely at a higher price. So I would highly
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recommend if you do have some sort of bulk grocery store like a Winco, maybe even look into Costco
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and see what they have, or perhaps even go into like a restaurant supply store. A lot of times they have
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the restaurant supply quantities for various food items, and you could probably even order online
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Of course, another option is to get just regular potatoes, which are also really reasonable. The
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only difference with regular potatoes is that you do have to prepare them. So you have to peel them
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you have to dice them, you have to boil them, and then you have to mash them, whether that's with
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you know, just a masher or a blender or an immersion blender, it does take more time
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And if you are preparing like a main dish for a Christmas, holiday, Thanksgiving, Easter, barbecue
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anything like that, it just takes that much extra effort. Another thing that I do want to talk about
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is how do you keep your mashed potatoes warm? Because mashed potatoes are an easy thing to make
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ahead of time, so you can prepare those other dishes, you know, more toward the time that you're
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going to be serving them. So you can prepare mashed potatoes ahead of time. I do recommend
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making them the same day, but you can definitely make them several hours beforehand. But of course
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you do want to keep them warm because no one likes like cold, icky mashed potatoes. So the first
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option is using like a pot like this, just a regular pot with a lid, and you can leave it on
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the stove on low so it keeps those mashed potatoes warm. I would recommend stirring them every once
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a while just so you can mix it up and get some of those mashed potatoes that were on the top
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toward the bottom where the heat source is. Now if you're making a large quantity of mashed potatoes
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I would recommend using a huge stock pot like this, so you can fit them all in there of course
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Not a lot of people have these, so if you don't, ask your friends and family if you could borrow
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one just for the day, or you could purchase one of course if you are making a ton of mashed potatoes
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Maybe you're going to be making more like that in the future. Another option is you can use like a
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baking pan like this, and you can put the mashed potatoes in there, especially if you don't have
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that many people you're serving mashed potatoes to, and you can cover it with tin foil or aluminum
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foil. I don't know what you call it, people call it different things in other parts of the world
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and the country, but anyway you can put the oven on a low temperature so that way it's not baking
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them, but just kind of keeping them warm until you want to serve them. The next option is probably my
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favorite option, and that is using a crock pot to keep them warm because that's kind of what crock
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pots are made for. Of course you can cook stuff in here, but it's made for keeping food warm on a low
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setting. So you can either cook your potatoes in the crock pot, or you could cook them in a regular
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pot on the stove and then transfer them into the crock pot to keep them warm. On this crock pot
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it actually has a setting for keep warm, so that's perfect. That's why this is one of my favorite
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options to keep those mashed potatoes warm. Another option is to keep them in an instant pot. I don't
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have one on hand right now, but I know a lot of people do have them at home, and so you can cook
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them in there and also keep them in your instant pot to keep your mashed potatoes warm. And it does
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have a setting for keeping it on low so you can keep food warm. All right, now go out and get your
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taters, get them ready, and enjoy serving them to your people because that's what it's all about
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Making people happy, serving them good food so we can spend time together, and enjoy eating them
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because who doesn't love mashed potatoes
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