Creamy Mashed Potatoes

This recipe was on The Pioneer Woman's first episode on the Food Network last Saturday morning. She was cooking up a cowboy dinner and aparently cowboys LOVE creamy mashed potatoes with their chicken fried steak and gravy. Now I wasn't prepared to make chicken fried steak, but I just had to try these creamy mashed potatoes. And since a 5 lb bag of potatoes was on sale at Meijers last week for $1, it was like a match made in heaven.

The Pioneer Woman is kind of like Paula Deen, and cooks with a lot of butter, heavy cream and other full fat ingredients. I probably did the worst sin and cut back on the butter and used skim milk and reduced fat cream cheese (also cut that back also). I also halved the recipe because I don't have a bunch of hungry cowboys to feed, but if you do know of a hungry cowboy and he is single...hook a girl up!

Below is my version of the recipe. If you want the original version, click here. I also added some seasoned salt and some steak seasoning (Kansas City steak seasoning) to the top of the potatoes, along with a little butter before I baked them. I love steak seasoning on my potatoes for some reason. These were amazing, and I am sure if you used The Pioneer Woman's original recipe it would be super duper amazing!

Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Inspired by The Pioneer Woman - Food Network

Ingredients

• 1/2 stick butter, softened, plus more for pan
• 2 pounds russet or Yukon gold potatoes
• 2 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup milk 
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter a 4-quart baking dish.

Peel and cut the potatoes into chunks. Bring a large pot of water to a simmer and add the potatoes. Bring to a boil and cook until fork tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

Drain the potatoes in a large colander. Place them back into the dry pot and put the pot on the stove. Mash the potatoes over low heat, allowing all the steam to escape before adding in all the other ingredients.

Turn off the heat and add 1/3 stick of butter, the cream cheese, milk, seasoned salt, kosher salt and pepper. Mash to combine.

Spread the potatoes in the prepared baking dish. Throw pats of the remaining butter over the top of the potatoes. I also added some more seasoned salt and some steak seasoning on top as well. Bake until the butter is melted and the potatoes are warmed through, 20 to 30 minutes.