Name: Buttery, Cheesy Instant Pot Smashed Potatoes
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 13 min
Ingredients: 2 pounds baby red potatoes (no need to peel or dice); 6 tablespoons butter, diced into small cubes for easier/quicker melting; 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese; 2 tablespoons Greek yogurt; 1 teaspoon garlic powder; Salt and pepper

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Hello, beautiful.

Look at all that cheese and butter smashed into those tender potatoes – it is intense and passionate love at first sight 😍. Come into my life and never leave me, buttery, cheesy Instant Pot smashed potatoes! But for real…PLEASE.

These are not your average mashed potatoes. Regular mashed potatoes = creamy, fluffy, and smooth. They are a magical, delicious creation all on their own, but these are different. My husband discovered these one day when he was craving mashed potatoes and we had all the ingredients except for cream/milk. So he made them with just butter and a little Greek yogurt.

The result? Way thicker, way denser, way less smooth and thin, way chunkier. These smashed potatoes are hearty, SO buttery, cheesy, and I LOVE THEM FOREVER. They are my new favorite way to eat potatoes. They are so much more satisfying than mashed for some reason, I’m not exactly sure why. Probably because it really feels like you’re digging into a pile of hearty chunked up potatoes versus a smooth puree – there’s so much more body to it. Does that make sense? IDKKK just make them.

Not only are these potatoes heartier and thicker than the traditional mashed potato, they are also WAY easier to make. First of all, the Instant Pot makes these potatoes a breeze from the start. Throw ’em in, let ’em go, and you’re basically done. When I say “throw ’em in,” I really mean that…you don’t have to peel OR dice them (peeling potatoes = the bane of my existence) – does it get any easier than that? And then from there it’s a super quick and dirty process.

Add the butter, Greek yogurt, cheese, and seasonings to your potatoes and smash just a little with your potato smasher. You want the potatoes to be rustic and chunky, so you don’t have to mash, mash, mash until your forearm is sore. Just mash until the potatoes have reached the chunkiness you desire, and then fold together with a spoon/rubber spatula if any of the ingredients need to be further incorporated.

Seriously it’s the easiest potato dish ever. And you’ll feel truly rustic and rugged eating it, potato peels and all. GET IN THERE! We at these with Mini BBQ Meatloaves and felt like true Americans. Meat and potatoes, yo. Not a common meal in our house, but pretty dang satisfying when it does happen.

So, Vegas! It was a super fun trip. We just got back yesterday evening. It included the following:

Seeing awesome family
Eating at a billion story high ROTATING restaurant
Seeing the Blue Man Group
Hitting balls at Top Golf (I think our one-year-old would probs be better with a golf club than us if we let him take a wack at it)
Eating at several other yummy restaurants (including a super legit ramen place…BAE)
Playing lots of games
Eating awesome home cooked food (slow smoked brisket…BAE x2)
Playing craps (dice game at casino) – omgomg so much fun
Having like nine heat strokes a piece since it was the surface of the sun outside

It was great! However…I must tell you the tale of our travel day on the way there last Wednesday. OMG WORST THING EVER. So we were catching a 6 am flight out of Kansas City, we needed to get to the airport an hour before, and it’s a two hour drive from our house. So we decided to leave at 3 am from Manhattan. Woke up at 2:30, were 100% miserable, made it to the car, and hit the road by 3 as planned.

BUT – we are stupid and didn’t leave extra room for stops or mistakes. So we stopped to grab breakfast at McDonald’s which set us back about ten minutes, and then I’m dumb and left my phone in the car, causing us to miss the first bus from the parking lot to the terminal and making us have to wait for the second, setting us back at least 10-15 minutes. As a result, we only made it to the airport doors 30 minutes early. Which I actually thought wasn’t that big of a deal because the Kansas City airport NEVER has any lines anywhere, security takes less than 10 minutes always, even during holiday seasons, and I know they don’t close the boarding doors until 10 minutes before.

BUT – we had to check a bag, and apparently they close the check-in desk (where you check your bags) thirty minutes before…guess how many minutes we missed that by? TWO MINUTES!! If we had gotten there two minutes earlier, we would have been fine. But nope – we missed the check in deadline, i.e. missing the flight.

We were unbelievably exhausted and now SO sad, but they rolled us over to a later flight and now we were going to be in Vegas by 5:40 pm instead of 9:40 am. We were super bummed. We went back to our car in the parking lot, put down the seats, and tried to sleep in the trunk for a few hours before our 11 am flight. With the car off and windows cracked, we were baking in the car like two little cookies. It was not a stay at the Plaza, to say the least. But we got about an hour of sleep in and then took a bus to the terminals again.

We got on that flight and arrived in Houston (where our connection was) at about 1. We were supposed to catch a flight from Houston to Vegas at 4. BUT – guess what? The plane was delayed for mechanical issues until NINE THIRTY PM. Leaving our arrival time at like 10:40. They put us on standby for another earlier flight at like 7:30, and by some miracle we ended up making it (even though it was SO overbooked) and arrived in Vegas at about 9.

BUT – our bags were still on the original flight, so we had to drive back to the airport at 10:30 to get our bags…and they live forty minutes away from the airport, so we ended up actually getting to their house, with our bags, ready to go to bed, at midnight. Which is 2 am Kansas time. Which means we were traveling for 24 hours. DEAATTTHHHHHHH.

Isn’t that awful??? It was awful. But, we made it, and we will never ever ever ever again not give ourselves enough time to get to the airport! Lesson learned! Thank GOD we didn’t have Ford with us, or this day would have been astronomically harder and more stressful. Luckily he was chillin’ at home with his grandma, who he stayed with for the week.

Anyway, all that to say, it was a great trip aside from that travel day, but it is good to be home with little Ford and back to our daily life! Which just so happens to include daily servings of THESE POTATOES. Life.

Buttery, Cheesy Instant Pot Smashed Potatoes

Author: Annie Chesson
Prep Time: 5 mins
Cook Time: 8 minutes
Total Time: 13 minutes
Yield: 7 servings 1x

Ingredients

Scale

2 pounds baby red potatoes (no need to peel or dice)
6 tablespoons butter, diced into small cubes for easier/quicker melting
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper

Instructions

Add your trivet insert into the Instant Pot and add 2 cups of water into the pot
Dump your potatoes out on top of the trivet and close + seal the Instant Pot lid
Cook on high manual pressure for 8 minutes and quick release the pressure when the 8 minutes are up
Add the potatoes to a large bowl and add all the remaining ingredients (butter, cheese, Greek yogurt, garlic powder, and salt/pepper to taste)
Using a potato masher, smash the potatoes until they are smashed but still chunky and hearty. If the ingredients aren’t fully mix in, fold together with a spoon until combined (that way you don’t over mash with the masher while you’re trying to mix together the ingredients)
Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve!

Notes

These are not smooth and creamy like traditional mashed potatoes. They are meant to be thick and chunky but be very flavorful from the butter, cheese, and other additions!

Total recipe time does not include the time it will take the Instant Pot to come to pressure before the 8 minute cook time begins.