Ragebite: TikTok Ruined Mashed Potatoes ... And My Life
Welcome to Ragebite, a new column where Dennis Lee finds the most absurd, anger-inducing recipes the internet has to offer and goes where no one has gone before: actually cooking them himself.
The internet is full of attention-seeking, rage-inducing cooking videos, and I've always been curious as to whether or not anyone actually tries these recipes. Sure, watching someone create an objectively bad recipe is fun, but it's hard not to wonder whether or not there's a nugget of valid culinary advice hidden in them. Could that disgusting slop actually taste okay? That's what I'm setting out to test. For this inaugural edition of Ragebite, I found a viral video of a mother and son (who go by @joshandmomma on TikTok) making mashed potatoes with an unusual base.
@joshandmomma Who keeps tagging Momma in these videos!?! @Josh Godfrey @Josh's Momma #joshandmomma #joshsmom #mashedpotatoes #familyrecipe #easyrecipe
In case you couldn't be bothered to watch that video (it's something, all right), this "recipe" involves making mashed potatoes using boiled potato chips along with a few other ingredients like margarine, sour cream, and mayo, for uh, flavor. Part of me wondered whether there was something to this — I mean, instant mashed potatoes are pretty much just rehydrated potato flakes, and potato chips are like giant dehydrated potato flakes (via the frying process), so there's a bit of logic here. But the way @joshandmomma go about executing this kind of made me want to throw up, so obviously I had to try it their way.
You experience a lot of different emotions when boiling a bag of chips
In the video, Momma from @joshandmomma dumps a bag of delicious original Lay's (number 10 on our Lay's ranking) into a pot of boiling water, which I unhappily did (I may or may not have eaten a few of the pristine chips prior to doing so). She proclaims that the popping and crackling coming from the chips "Almost sounds like rain," which isn't entirely accurate — it's a little more like the snapping from Rice Krispies, but knowing it was potato chips made me feel like a filthy boy.
The resulting potatoes didn't quite end up looking like mashed potatoes yet, but they did indeed break down quite a bit. I noticed a sheen of oil on top of the water, which reminded me I should cut down on my snacking. I stirred the soggy chips until they mostly broke down and tried draining them into a colander in the sink, which was a bit of a failure — the mixture barely drained any water and it left a trail of greasy disintegrated potato in the basin that needed to be scrubbed out later. Hey, who among us doesn't appreciate work with a side of more work?
The potato chip mashed potato mix-ins are, in fact, appalling
As I mentioned before, the stuff @joshandmomma stirred into the potato mixture was ancient Country Crock spread, expired sour cream, and mayonnaise. I'm not a regular eater of margarine, so I had to get a fresh tub. Why these people didn't just reach for a stick of butter, I don't know, but to each their own. In the end, margarine's still a somewhat buttery source of fat, so I can't complain that much.
Then there's the matter of the expired sour cream, which unfortunately, I had (don't judge me!). Though @joshandmomma's had begun to mold, mine hadn't — it was only two weeks past the best-by date on the lid. I know, I know. I suppose adding sour cream to mashed potatoes isn't the worst idea; I'm sure I've experimented with it in the past to add some richness. I stirred it right in with the shame of knowing I'd have to reveal to you all the state of my fridge. What hurt the most was that I found a brand new tub of sour cream in my fridge immediately afterwards.
The worst addition to these "mashed potatoes," however, was the damn mayo. And before I go on, I love mayo. But Midwesterners and Southerners, there's no need to add it to absolutely everything. I have limits, and adding mayonnaise to a potato chip base that's already got Country Crock and shameful expired sour cream in it made me sad inside. And before we get into the argument over Duke's versus Hellman's, I'll tell you what my favorite mayonnaise actually is: It's the one on sale at the grocery store, hence this Duke's (also, the best mayo is Hellman's and I won't hear any argument otherwise).
These potato chip mashed potatoes are horrible in multiple ways
Now it was time to finally taste these potato chip mashed potatoes. They weren't visually appealing, looking more like cream of wheat or gruel than regular mashed potatoes, with irregular bits mixed in. Plus, since I couldn't quite wring all the water out of them earlier, the potatoes were runny. So how did they taste, you ask? You're clearly champing at the bit to find out if I died.
These mashed potatoes were watery, deceptively oily, and grainy at the same time. But the surprise was, they were also woefully undersalted. That oily coating in my mouth eventually became nearly tacky, making me conscious about the inner texture of my own body like never before. I will admit that they did taste like concentrated potatoes. But (I'd normally put an expletive here) do not do this, do not feed this to your family, everyone will be fighting for the single toilet in the house in about four to six hours (imagine if these had been made with olestra). Another unintended side effect was that the oil lingered on my lips for a long time, turning me into a human version of ChapStick.
So on a scale of Rage to Bite, I'm picking Rage. In some alternate dimension, you can turn potato chips into a scrumptious version of mashed potatoes. But in the TikTok universe, this content is just that, video to rot your brain and ruin your quality of life. Unfortunately for me, it also wrecked my mouth, and for that, @joshandmomma, I will never forgive you.