Duchess Potatoes really are really easy to make and don’t they look great?!

They are a real crowd pleaser year round, but we love to serve our Duchess potatoes every Thanksgiving and Christmas to wow the guests, they are a perfect fancy mashed potato side dish and you really can’t go wrong with them.

Quick Tips for Making Duchess Potatoes

Make sure you fully peel your potatoes, you don’t want any peel left on the potato. Then cut into even sizes so that they will cook at the same time.

So I’ve been making these fabulous little Duchess potatoes for years. For the longest time I simply used a potato masher and made sure there were no lumps so that they are easy to pipe, and that’s definitely an option but I’ve found a better way!

I recently discovered a magical little gadget called a potato ricer! It makes the smoothest, creamiest mashed potatoes I’ve ever tried and it’s remarkably satisfying to squash a whole cooked potato into one end and get lovely riced potatoes out of the other end!

It makes piping the Duchess potatoes SO much easier and it’s 100% lump free, so I highly recommend it. It’s also not a large or expensive gadget, I keep mine in a small kitchen drawer.

Once you’re ready to pipe you’ll need a piping bag fitted with a wide star tip such as a 1M tip or something similar. If you do not rice the potatoes you need to ensure you have zero lumps or that will make it really hard to pipe them.

If you do not have a piping bag you could try adding the potatoes to a ziplock type bag and cut the corner off and try piping it out of that, but it won’t look nearly as good.

Or, if you don’t want to do any piping you could just spread the potatoes out in casserole dish and create a rough surface with a fork and bake for the same time.

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Make them dairy free! If you’re cooking for someone who is dairy free you can use a dairy free butter substitute such as Earth Balance, or Pure Margarine if you are in the UK.

Make ahead Duchess Potatoes!

You can peel the potatoes ahead of time and as long as you submerge them in water until you are ready to cook them you’re good to go, they will start to oxidize and turn brown if you peel and leave them sitting out too long.

Once boiled you can mash them, add the butter and eggs, and mash, then you can pipe them out on a lined baking sheet until you are ready to bake.

To save time we usually make them like this on the morning of the day we plan to serve them as piping can take longer than you think and requires a little bit of effort!