How Many Potatoes Do I Use?!

One side dish that I have avoided in the past is mashed potatoes. One reason is that there are so many varieties of mashed potatoes that everyone likes, I never know what type to make. My husband loves his mother's sour cream mashed potatoes, my mom makes my grandma's light and fluffy potatoes, and then there's the double baked, casseroles, and just plain baked. So I often just resort to making homemade french fries or only using potatoes in a recipe where they are roasted with other vegetables. 
Then, let's not even get into how to measure how many potatoes to use when a recipe calls for, lets say, 4 cups of mashed potatoes. 

While at my mother's house for the weekend, her recipe called for jambalaya on top of mashed potatoes. So we were determined to figure out how many potatoes it takes to make mashed potatoes, and how many people that would serve. The only way to do that is to measure the pounds of potatoes that we washed and cooked (not the size), and then measure the amount of mashed potatoes it made.

We used 5.87 pounds of small red potatoes (but remember, it shouldn't matter what kind or size of potatoes if we go by pounds). When cooked and mashed, it made exactly 11 cups of mashed potatoes, which is approximately 1 pound of raw potatoes to 2 cups of mashed potatoes. 

What does this mean for how much to make per person? If it's just a side dish at a typical meal, the average person could take between 1/2 and 3/4 cup. This means to serve 2 people at one meal, you would need 1 to 1 1/2 cups of mashed potatoes. Most people make mashed potatoes around thanksgiving to serve to large groups of people. If there will be 10 people at the table, and let's face it, we all take more than 1/2 a cup to eat with our turkey, gravy and corn, I would suggest making approximately 10 cups just to feed each person one time. 

Here's a chart to help you decide how much to make.

Note: I don't know a single person who takes only 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes at any meal. I would say a more realistic serving is 1 cup, so that's what I based the serving size on. Remember, all numbers are approximate. 

Raw potatoes  =  Mashed potatoes  =  Servings 
                                                              (1 cup per person)
1 pound                2 cups                         2 servings
2 pounds               4 cups                        4 servings
5 pounds              10 cups                       10 servings
10 pounds            20 cups                       20 servings   

To give you a visual of how much this is, we put the mashed potatoes in a 2 quart casserole dish. Yes, the potatoes are pink! We used home grown red potatoes that are red all the way through. 

4 cups

8 cups

11 cups

I hope this helps you decide how many potatoes to use and make to feed your family this thanksgiving!