What are some of your unpopular opinions about food?

PAPYRUS3 wrote: »

Regarding the 'fake' potatoes - I don't think I've ever had them. Perhaps at a crappy little diner during a road trip? How different are they to the real thing?

I think that's unanswerable, more or less.

The plainer, cheaper brands IME can be IMO more starchy seeming (sort of dry despite containing liquid, in a weird way) compared to plain potatoes mashed (but also without a lot of added butter, milk, cream, etc.).

Some of the brands have odd things added to make the flavor supposedly richer, I guess. Some of those have an odd taste, to me.

Some brands I've had are not too bad, but to my taste, not as satisfying as real mashed potatoes. Part of it is that most are more a "whipped potato" texture, very smooth, and grew up eating mashed potatoes with a slightly less fully-smooth texture (but not full of chunks or anything). That's a personal preference issue, I think.

I used to keep some instant mashed potatoes around to thicken soups, or to have as the occasional spur of the moment side, since I don't usually buy potatoes (just don't eat them often enough). They're one of the things that started seeming not worth their calories when I started counting, so mostly I just wait and eat mashed potatoes at holiday meals.

I may be prejudiced by (1) having been brought up in a home where we never had instant, and (2) having gone to a school where many of the entrees were - believe it or not - gravy. Could be beef gravy, hamburger gravy, pork gravy, chicken gravy, whatever. You'd get a big heap of instant mashed potatoes (the cheap starchy kind) with a ladle-full of kind of poor gravy, with a few meat shreds in it. One of these was the lunch entree at least 1-2 times per week. It can put a person off the whole concept, I think. 🤷‍♀️

Instant mashed potatoes are a great shortcut for potato bread, and the finished product actually has a better texture than dough made with scratch-mashed potatoes, in my opinion.