Larry Floersch
So there I was on my back in the dentist’s chair. Have you noticed you no longer “sit” in a dentist’s chair? The staff reclines you so your head is lower than your feet. It must be some sort of control thing because all your blood rushes to your head.
Anyhow, there I was thinking about the great mystery of gravity — how it operates across immense distances with nothing in between — and I had just solved that mystery when the dental technician told me to close my lips around the suction tube in my mouth, and “poof”! The answer was gone! Just like Sean Connery in the film “Medicine Man,” where he discovers the cure for cancer but loses it when the jungle burns down around him.
It then dawned on me that too many of us have had great thoughts sucked out of our brains by those dental suction tubes, not to mention by smart phones, video games, and television and movies in general, leaving behind, well, . . . just vacuums in which less-than-great ideas float around, ideas such as making mashed potatoes from Pringles. That’s right, Pringles mashed potatoes!
If you’ve never had Pringles, they are an engineering marvel, “potato” chips that are barely “potato,” fried/baked into hyperbolic paraboloids (a term you can use to impress your fellow munchers). The saddle shape makes them stackable, so rather than being packaged in metallized polypropylene bags like traditional potato chips, which allow the chips to be crushed to smithereens by grocery store baggers who are trained to put the chips at the bottom of a grocery bag and follow that with, say, a 10-pound watermelon, Pringles are packaged in rigid cardboard tubes that are strong enough, if you use four of them, to be used as jackstands under a Ford F-150 and are therefore watermelon proof.
Unlike traditional chips, which are made from thin slices of real raw potatoes, Pringles are manufactured from cooked and dehydrated potato flakes or granules, sort of like what’s in a box of instant mashed potatoes. To this is added potato starch, corn starch, degerminated yellow corn flour (who knew yellow corn flour had germs?), and rice flour, along with the usual array of mystery ingredients, such as maltodextrin and mono- and diglycerides.
Then, of course, come the flavorings, which are dusted onto the chips: sour cream and onion, cheddar cheese, ranch, salt and vinegar, honey mustard, dill pickle, Texas BBQ brisket, smoky bacon, and Miller Lite beer-braised steak, to name just a few. The flavors are made from ingredients similar to those used for the chips themselves, including “natural flavors,” whatever those are, and, at this point, does it even matter if those flavors are “natural”?
In my book, Pringles are mankind’s highest achievement in ultraprocessed foods. Using them to make mashed potatoes is almost a no-brainer. In fact, it probably is a no-brainer.
Here is how to create this labor-saving kitchen hack, as actually seen in one of several YouTube videos on the topic.
First, throw out any real potatoes. They’re probably turning green anyway from having been in the pantry too long, and as we all know from sixth-grade science class, the green is caused by the formation of solanine, which is toxic. And why spend $4.50 for four pounds of potatoes that turn green when you can spend between $7.50 to $12 for three to five cans of Pringles?
Next, ditch that box of Ore-Ida dehydrated mashed potato flakes. It’s a one-trick pony. You’re definitely not going to sit on the sofa munching on potato flakes while watching the Red Sox and Yankees. Pringles are multitaskers.
Next, get a large pot of water boiling on the stove. Add about three to five tubes of Pringles, depending on how many people are going to enjoy this amazing dish. Boil them back into the primordial slurry from whence they came back in the Pringles factory.
Now pour the slurry into a strainer and allow the water to slowly seep away. You should end up with several cups of a substance resembling white Play-Doh that has been hanging around on a day-care center floor for six months.
Return the Pringles Play-Doh to the pot. Now this is where you will use all the cooking skills you learned at your mother’s side while growing up.
Open a large jar of pre-minced garlic and add about a tablespoon or more. Never, ever, use your knife skills to peel and mince fresh garlic for this step!
Follow this with about a half pound of butter. Like all great chefs, make sure to use unsalted butter. You don’t want to disturb the delicate balance of flavors.
Now add a large amount of yellow cheddar cheese. Make sure it is yellow, because everyone knows cheese is made from yellow milk, and some diners would never touch Cabot white cheddar because it is not the right color.
Snip open a pouch of freeze-dried minced herbs and add it to the Pringles mixture. Stir everything together and transfer to a serving dish, using a spatula to shape the Pringles into a mound, or, if you have any artistic talent, into a bas relief of RFK Jr’s face while thinking “Resist!”
Your guests will be astounded by your culinary abilities. As Julia would say, “Bon appetit!”
