Name: Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 6 pounds Yukon gold potatoes; 1 1/2 cups water; 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt; 6 tablespoons salted butter; 3/4 cup heavy cream or half and half; Thinly chopped chives, for garnish; Black pepper, for garnish

Make fluffy, creamy Instant Pot mashed potatoes in this hands off method! A pressure cooker is perfect for making big pot for a crowd.

One of the very best uses for your Instant Pot? Mashed potatoes. Yes, mashed potatoes are so much easier in a pressure cooker! You don’t have to worry about them boiling over on the stovetop, or keep testing them to see when they’re done. Nope, just throw them into the Instant Pot and press Go! It also gets that massive pot off the stove top make way for other things you might be cooking. So, Alex and I are all about the ease of Instant Pot mashed potatoes. Ready to hear our secrets?

What makes the best Instant Pot mashed potatoes?

Alex and I love creating recipes together for many reasons. But one of the most fun things is that we get to go off, research the best way to do things, and then get our hands dirty trying them out! Here’s what we learned in the process of making this recipe:

Yukon gold potatoes make the best mashed potatoes. The naturally creamy interior of Yukon golds is perfect for the texture of mashed. If you’ve tried mashed potatoes with the wrong variety of potato, you’ll notice it can come out grainy or super starchy. Not so here!
Using a potato ricer makes for a light and fluffy texture. (It’s also fun!) Ever used a potato ricer? It’s a gadget that pushes the potatoes through little holes, and makes for the perfect mashed potato texture. But it’s definitely not required. See the section below!
A little cream and a little buttah. And chives! This recipe is classic and uses just enough cream and butter to give the potatoes flavor, but not so much you get a stomach ache. Chives are the perfect garnish!

How long do Instant Pot mashed potatoes cook?

A great question! The cook time for these Instant Pot mashed potatoes is only 12 minutes! However, with all Instant Pot recipes, you must keep in mind the “preheat” time. This is the time it takes for the Instant Pot to get up to pressure before it can cook. This recipe takes 15 to 20 minutes to come up to pressure, due to the amount of potatoes and water in the pot. So the total cook time is about 30 minutes total.

What does mashed potatoes for a crowd mean?

This Instant Pot mashed potatoes is designed for a crowd. This recipe is intended for 12 or more servings. This means that it’s perfect for big dinner parties, or holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. What’s perfect about this recipe is that it allows you to use your stovetop for other things. Throw the potatoes into the pot, then use the time and space for other things you’re preparing!

This recipe uses 6 pounds of potatoes, which is 2 large bags. It can take quite a while to peel them all, so you may want to enlist some help to speed up that part. (Alex nabbed me to be his helper!)

How to use a potato ricer!

A potato ricer isn’t required for this recipe, but if you have one it makes a great texture for the potatoes. To use a potato ricer, do the following:

Place a few potato chunks in the basket of the ricer.
Hold the ricer over a clean bowl and squeeze until the potato extrudes through the holes.

Want to get one? Here’s our potato ricer on Amazon.

What Instant Pot do you use?

All pressure cooker brands vary! Here’s the brand we use: an Instant Pot 6 Qt Programmable Pressure Cooker. This recipe is customized for a 6 quart pressure cooker. You’ll definitely need a 6 quart size here, otherwise the potatoes won’t fit!

More Instant Pot vegetable recipes

The pressure cooker is perfect for vegetables! Here are some of our favorite vegetables to cook in the Instant Pot:

Instant Pot Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan: Brussels sprouts take no time at all, and these are seriously tasty.
Instant Pot Beets: Shortcut the time of roasting beets in half!
Instant Pot Spaghetti Squash: Here’s the shortest way to cook spaghetti squash, hands down.
Instant Pot Acorn Squash: Another great recipe, this one is perfect as a Thanksgiving side too.
Instant Pot Broccoli: Broccoli cooks in 0 minutes. Zero! It’s so quick.
Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes: The pressure cooker makes for perfectly fluffy and creamy sweet potatoes, every time.

This Instant Pot mashed potatoes recipe is…

Vegetarian and gluten-free.