I tried a TikTok hack for making the best mashed potatoes and I'll never use plain salted water again

• A TikToker shared her hack for making delicious mashed potatoes: boiling them in chicken stock.
• I tried it out and made two batches: one from potatoes boiled in stock and one in water.

There are many, many dishes on my list of comfort foods, but mashed potatoes are very close to the top. Just one forkful of the creamy, flavorful whip is enough to both send me back in time to childhood dinners and plop me smack dab in the middle of a chic steakhouse.

Like most potato lovers, I've got my own tried and true mashed method. I typically use Yukon Gold potatoes and boil them in salted water. I drain the water and add some butter, cream, and herbs before taking a masher to the starchy pile.

But I started to doubt my potato-mashing ways after coming across a flavorful mashed potato hack shared by comedian Jourdyn Parks in December 2020. The video made the rounds on the internet in early 2021 and, as of November 2022, has nearly 7,000 likes and more than 300 shares.

"I know that you can boil your potatoes in water," Parks told BuzzFeed after her hack went viral. "In fact, it's probably the most common way. I just can't — for the life of me — figure out why you'd choose to when stock and broth are options."

According to Parks, the best way to boil potatoes is in a flavorful stock.

Her first step is to wash the potatoes and rub them down with avocado oil. If you're not into leaving the skin on, Parks says you can peel them, but I personally love the texture they add.

After cutting the potatoes into halves, Parks says to put them in a pot with a cup of water, a pinch of sea salt, and some sort of meat stock, "depending on what you're going to serve your mashed potatoes with," she said in her video, later adding "you should be serving them with a meat."

Parks told BuzzFeed that she learned this tip from her grandmother. In her video, she explained that boiling the potatoes in stock locks in flavor and helps to make the mash creamier once you add your dairy or seasoning.

Do this, she says, and "they'll be delicious."

And readers, she was right.

I tested out this hack by boiling one batch of potatoes in chicken stock and another in water before mashing

I made two nearly identical batches with the only difference being one was boiled in mostly chicken stock (as per Parks' instructions) instead of water. Both batches had salt in the boil as well, and I added the same amount of butter and cream to each batch of boiled potatoes before mashing.

Right off the bat, I noticed a small difference in texture.

The mash made with stock was slightly more creamy, as Parks suggested it would be. It wasn't extraordinarily obvious, and I had to go back and taste each several times (not sorry) to make sure, but the water-boiled potatoes had a bit more of a grainy texture that I noticed when I pushed them to the roof of my mouth with my tongue.

The chicken stock mashed potatoes tasted so much better

I tried the two batches side-by-side without anything else added and immediately could tell the difference. The flavor of stock-mashed potatoes was much more rich and robust than its competitor.

In fact, there really was no competition. The water-boiled batch was bland in comparison. It didn't really have a flavor at all, which could be good if you're looking to add a ton of herbs and specific flavoring through spices.

Thinking about the potatoes as a standalone side dish, though, or a base for some saucy chicken, I think broth-boiled is the obvious way to go. It married the two meal components so that the whole dish feels cohesive.

Suffice it to say, I'll never serve water-boiled mashed potatoes again.