That makes me wonder about your pork belly.
You do not. Yellow are best
Yeah, as I understand it, the percentage of butter you add to mashed potatoes is a bit of a dick-measuring contest between a subset of (often celebrity) chefs.
I often cook mirepoix or sofrito etc in a 50/50 mix of butter and olive oil - and I routinely get people telling me ‘the oil won’t help the butter from burning you know’. I do it because I like the combination.
99% of good cooking is just:
- Start with the best, freshest ingredients you can find and afford.
- Learn a few basic proper cooking techniques, like how to brown stuff right.
I buy whole raw spices whenever possible, and toast, grind and mix them at time of use, especially for curry powder. But for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to freeze any leftover curry powder to keep it just-ground fresh, and I do often make more than I use. Good tip, thanks.
Hey, throw one over here! Feeling a bit peckish.
As do I. Sorry if I was being a pest.
I took a couple of classes years ago that upped my game quite a bit. One was soups and stews and the other was sauces and gravies.
Not at all - the myth about oil preventing the butter burning is indeed a myth (marginally true only in the sense that if you use the normal amount of butter plus some oil, you’re heating more thermal mass, so you might burn it slower than you normally do, but only in the time dimension, not temperature.
I was an adult who had been cooking for several years, and thought I was pretty good. Then I watched a cooking show that said “browning meat is not the same as graying it” and I went ohhh-- I had been overcrowding the pan and basically boiling or steaming the meat in its own juices instead of browning it. When I learned to brown properly in small batches, then use a little wine or stock to deglaze the pan and make a fond, people became more, um, fond of my cooking 
Even people who appreciate fancy-ass cooking know that it has its place. My kitchen has both a well-loved copy of the French Laundry cookbook and a big bag of frozen tater tots. I can give you a discourse on the food at every gas station within 50 miles of my house, but I’m also planning to do Eleven Madison Park later this year.
Every high-end chef I know eats like a frat boy when they’re off the clock.
Yum. Can’t wait to get me Taco bell cheapo tacos today (not that I’m chef of note, or a frat boy)
Yep, gas station food can be just the thing (for a nice bellyache).
Or a Buckees can actually be really good eats.
I was amazed when my brother and sister-in-law were driving cross country they were seemingly enraptured when they got back to Buc-ees territory.
I know Sheetz and Wawa have their fans in PA/MD/VA, but this seemed next-level.
These don’t have gravy, but they are thrown. Correction: “throwed”
I’ve been there; it’s quite a down-home experience. And the bread does get to flyin’ hither and yon.
same.
Also, mushrooms.
Also omelettes and scrambled eggs
So, these folks cooking mashed potatoes with 50% butter, are they expecting to put gravy over that? I’d want less butter and good gravy.
Yeah, I prefer my mashed potatoes fluffy and lumpy. Much better vehicle for gravy.
I’ve been served sausages and mash in a restaurant where the mash texture was like a cooked roux and almost seemed to curdle when I tried to combine it with a bit of gravy. It required a spoon to eat it.
Mash, smashed, creamed, riced, sieved potatoes all require spoons at my house. Just 'cause, need something to form the gravy hole or make a mountain with. Yep. Taters need a spoon.
I don’t use equal parts butter, at all.
Jeez, they must get a lot of floor roll wastage. Maybe they offer up the floor rolls at a deep discount or even for free to those who dare, or are hungry and broke enough, similar to the infamous bar mat shot.
Yeah, I’ve found with the heat as high as I tend to use it for sauteeing, I start sauteeing everything with oil and then add butter for flavor later just to be safe, as I have most certainly burnt the butter before in a butter-oil mixture.
Ditto on that, as well. I should be able to scoop the potato and invert the spoon with the potato still clinging to it.