Mashed potatoes are probably loved by almost everyone. But not everyone knows that it can be used not only as a side dish, but also for preparing independent dishes, of which, by the way, there are a huge number. Moreover, it often happens that mashed potatoes remain after lunch or dinner. And even cooked in accordance with all the rules - with butter, milk, whipped with a mixer, the next day it no longer looks as appetizing as the day before. Nevertheless, do not rush to throw it away. It may well become the basis of a new dish. And it’s very tasty and quite peculiar. This is what we will talk about in our article. So, what can you cook from mashed potatoes? (Of what has just been made or left over from yesterday, it doesn’t matter.) Anything!
Soup
If you do not know what you can cook from the rest of mashed potatoes, because there is not much of it or there is simply no time to stand at the stove, cook the soup. An excellent option, which allows you to not only save the product, but also get an independent hearty dish at the output. So, melt over a small fire (directly in a saucepan) a tablespoon of butter. Then add finely chopped onion to it and fry. When the onion is gilded, pour a tablespoon of flour to it and mix thoroughly. Then pour two and a half glasses of milk. Constantly stirring the future soup, wait for it to boil. Then add three cups of mashed potato to it. And bother again. Until the mashed potatoes dissolve in milk. Salt and cook for ten minutes. You can add black pepper or any favorite seasoning. Serve the soup hot to the table, after sprinkling it with grated cheese and chopped herbs.
Mashed potato pancakes
And from mashed potatoes what can be prepared? Make fritters. For example, with zucchini. Take mashed potatoes - freshly prepared or yesterday. It will take about 500 g. Mix it with grated zucchini (200 grams of this vegetable will be enough). If there is no zucchini, you can replace it with a pumpkin. Beat the egg into the dough, add flour. Enough and four tablespoons. Salt, pepper, stir thoroughly. And then spread the dough with a spoon into the pan and fry the pancakes on both sides. They are especially delicious hot, with sour cream.
Mashed Sockets
And this is not all recipes for mashed potatoes. What else can you cook? Complicate the task and make potato nests. Surprise your home with a new dish prepared from a product so ordinary and familiar to everyone. Thinly cut the champignons and fry them in oil. As for the quantity, 250 g of mushrooms will be sufficient. But if you want and availability, you can take them and more. When the water from the mushrooms evaporates, add the finely chopped onion to them. Sauté. Cover the baking sheet with paper and place the cakes made from mashed potatoes on it. As for their size, it can be arbitrary. But the recipe recommends stopping at a diameter of 15 cm. In the center of each cake, make a deepening and put the cooked stuffing in it, generously sprinkle everything with grated cheese. Since it is quite salty in itself, try not to sprinkle white death during frying onions and mushrooms.
However, as for the addition of salt and all kinds of seasonings, everything here is purely individual - the hostess herself will figure out how to flavor her dish with these flavors, because in each family they are treated differently. So we will not focus on this further. After all, adding salt and seasoning is the procedure that is carried out by default when preparing any dish. And so back to the nests. They need to be baked in the oven, hot enough - at a temperature of about 200 gr. The time is about 20 minutes. By the way, if desired, the filling can be varied. For example, take fried minced meat instead of mushrooms. Or finely chopped ham. In general, in the presence of a certain degree of imagination, a real cook should not at all have a question about what can be prepared from mashed potato. Recipes of dishes from it differ not only in variety, but also in that they make it possible to experiment in the cooking process, adding or replacing certain ingredients.
Potato biscuits
We go further. And we suggest you try making mashed cookies! Make a glass of flour and the same amount of mashed potatoes, adding to it a yolk from an egg and half a packet of melted margarine, dough. Wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for an hour. When it cools, blind long sausages, cut them into pieces and make thin cakes. A diameter of about twenty centimeters. There must be 16 lozenges. Gather them in two piles, eight in each, roll out. Smear the resulting circle with protein and cut, like a pizza, into 12 parts. Sprinkle with grated cheese and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. The optimum temperature is about one hundred and eighty degrees.
Cooking a casserole
What else can I cook with mashed potatoes? Amazing casserole! Before describing the recipe for its preparation, it is worth noting the following. The dish is quite simple and very democratic. Having a basic recipe for preparing it, you can make dishes that are completely different in taste every day. How? Very simple. The base of this casserole is mashed potatoes. But the fillings can be varied. At the same time, make them meat and fish, and vegetable. Even cottage cheese, if desired, can be baked between layers of mashed potatoes. And believe me, it will turn out very tasty. And now we will tell the basics of cooking casseroles.
The available mashed potatoes must be divided into two parts, after having driven a couple of eggs into it and carefully mixed. Place one half in a greased form, level. Then put the filling on it. Say minced meat fried with onions. Cover the top with the second part of the puree. Sprinkle all with grated cheese and send for half an hour to the oven. You can improve the taste of the dish when serving, adding your favorite sauce to it.
Pie
You can also make a pie from mashed potatoes. With half a glass of yogurt, mix two glasses of mashed potatoes, add two eggs and half a small spoonful of soda. Pour flour (also a glass), seasoning and salt, stir again. In two pans, fry the mushrooms and onions with carrots separately. Put the dough in a mold, place vegetables on top, then mushrooms. Sprinkle with herbs and pour a mixture of two eggs and a pack of mayonnaise. If desired, grated cheese can be added to the fill. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees. The whole process will take about forty minutes.
Pies
So, you have mashed potatoes left. What can be prepared from it, you do not know. Make pies then! This will not take much time, and the big plus of this dish is that for him, in the absence of time, you can not even cook the filling. And take as her, for example, slices of ham. Or boiled sausage.
As for the cooking issue, everything is quite simple. Mix the mashed potatoes with the egg and add the flour to it. How much to pour, you will see for yourself. It is necessary to get a fairly dense dough from which you can sculpt pies. Cut the ham into circles, divide them in half. If there is cheese, you can cut it into thin slices. Take a piece of mashed potatoes, make a cake out of it, put a piece of ham and a piece of cheese inside. Close the filling with the edges of the tortillas and form a pie. Bake in a pan in a sufficiently large amount of oil. When the pies are browned, put them on a plate covered with a paper napkin, wait until the excess oil is absorbed into the paper, and then serve it with sour cream, herbs, sauce.
Muffins
And this is not all recipes for mashed potatoes. What else can you cook? And let's try to make ... muffins! Mix three glasses of mashed potatoes with a glass of grated cheddar, one egg and a sufficiently large amount of grated or very finely chopped garlic. Take molds for muffins, grease them with vegetable oil and fill them with cooked dough. Send everything to the oven for half an hour. The optimum temperature is the usual 180 degrees. After half an hour, remove the molds, sprinkle with grated cheese on the browned muffins and bake for another three minutes.
Last tip
If you do not know what you can cook from mashed potatoes yesterday, go the opposite. That is, think not about what can be made from it, but about what can be cooked with it. That is, simply put, use it as a filling. This is especially true when there is not much mashed potatoes left. Make dumplings with it. Or pies. Or take a ready-made puff pastry and make a pie from it, putting mashed potato with green onion and cheese as a filling. Believe me, it will be delicious!