The Best Instant Mashed Potatoes We Tried Come From A Budget Grocery Store

While instant mashed potatoes will never beat the hearty flavor of those made from scratch, you can't deny the convenience of spuds in a packet. We ranked 13 different brands of instant mashed potatoes from worst to best and found that they can vary greatly. For the most part, the pre-flavored mashed potatoes left plenty to be desired (those generally landed in the bottom half of our ranking), but there was one surprise that came out on top: Chef's Cupboard Buttery Mashed Potatoes.

If that name doesn't ring a bell, that's because Chef's Cupboard is Aldi's house brand. Our taste tester had nothing but glowing remarks about them, saying they were "some of the best I've ever tasted." Once prepared, the end product is smooth and creamy, thickening slightly after it stands, but the potatoes don't degrade into an unpleasant lumpy mess, like we found with some other brands. 

Plus, the butter flavor wasn't overwhelming or artificial-tasting, and fortunately, they aren't too salty, which was a problem we noted with other instant mashed potatoes. Our taster concluded, "I wouldn't be embarrassed to serve these as a side at a dinner party, and that's the highest praise instant mashed potatoes can receive."

If you want to make these Chef's Cupboard mashed potatoes even heartier, there is one ingredient you can also grab at Aldi. That would be canned potatoes, which are already cooked. When you combine canned and instant potatoes, you get a low-effort homemade-style mash, the tinned ingredient adding a better potato flavor and texture to each forkful. We recommend that you simply heat the canned potatoes, mash them with some milk and butter, then stir in the instant potato flakes to get that perfect texture. Stop yourself from over-mashing them, however, because you can get a gummy mouthful as a result.

After that, if you want to keep gilding the lily, feel free to add supporting ingredients to your mashed potatoes, such as creamy Boursin cheese flavored with garlic and herbs. We're also big fans of using roasted garlic as a single-ingredient mashed potato upgrade. With these few small adjustments, your Chef's Cupboard instant mashed potatoes will taste like a homemade batch, but we still happily believe that they're great as-is — no fussing necessary.