Best Spices for Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes pick up seasoning in three places: the cooking water, the dairy, and whatever you stir in at the end. Three named recipes show the range. Tyler Florence infuses garlic, thyme and bay into the cream, Saveur boils a dozen garlic cloves with the potatoes, and Sonja Overhiser folds in prepared horseradish.¹²³ If you only remember one thing, make it this: hydrate your garlic powder before it goes in.

At a glance

Seasoning	Job	How the recipes add it
Garlic	Savory, rounded depth	Simmered in cream, boiled with the potatoes, or minced¹²³
Garlic powder	Quick garlic flavor	Hydrate in water first (ATK)⁴⁵
Chives	Mild onion flavor, green flecks	Stirred in at the end¹²
Thyme and bay leaf	Herbal background	Infused, then strained out¹
White pepper	Heat without dark specks	Often suggested for pale cream dishes⁶
Horseradish	Sharp, nose-clearing heat	Prepared horseradish folded in at the end³
Salt	Seasoning	In the water, in the mash, or both¹²³
Parsley	Fresh herbal note	At the end⁷
Parmesan	Salty, savory depth	Stirred in⁸

Three recipes side by side

	Tyler Florence, Food Network (serves 4 to 6)¹	Saveur (serves 4 to 6)²	Sonja Overhiser, A Couple Cooks (serves 8)³
Potatoes	6 to 8 large Yukon Golds	2 lb waxy plus 1 lb russet	3 lb Yukon Gold plus 1 lb russet
Garlic	4 cloves, lightly crushed, heated in the cream and strained out	12 cloves, boiled with the potatoes	4 to 6 cloves, finely minced
Herbs	3 thyme sprigs and 2 bay leaves in the cream; 2 more bay leaves in the water; 2 tbsp chives	1/2 tsp fresh winter savory; chives	Chives, for garnish
Other seasoning	Freshly ground black pepper	Freshly ground pepper	2 to 4 tbsp prepared horseradish, to taste
Salt	1 tbsp in the cooking water, then kosher salt to taste	Sea salt to taste, after draining	Kosher salt in the water, plus 1 1/4 tsp in the mash
Dairy	1 cup heavy cream, 1/4 cup butter	Buttermilk, heavy cream, 10 tbsp butter	6 tbsp salted butter, 3/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup sour cream

These are the authors’ own recipes, not a house standard. Notice the garlic is always cooked. None of them adds it raw at the end.

Garlic

Fresh garlic

The recipes cook their garlic one of two ways. Florence heats lightly crushed cloves in the cream and butter with thyme and bay, then strains out the solids as the warm cream goes into the potatoes.¹ Saveur drops the peeled, crushed cloves into the pot of cold water with the potatoes, so they boil and get mashed in.² Either way, heat tames the garlic. America’s Test Kitchen found that getting a clove to 140°F or above takes much of the harsh bite out.⁹

Roasted garlic mashed into the potatoes and garlic compound butter are popular variations, though none of the three recipes uses them. If you make garlic oil to drizzle over the mash, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources says not to store garlic in oil at room temperature, and to keep homemade garlic oil in the fridge for no more than 4 days.¹⁰

Garlic powder: hydrate it first

Garlic powder is the one seasoning here that’s actually been tested in mashed potatoes. America’s Test Kitchen stirred it in dry and found the result tasted harsh and garlicky but not particularly complex.⁴ ATK’s advice is to mix the powder with a little water first, because garlic powder straight from the jar hasn’t developed its full flavor.⁵ See garlic powder vs. garlic and too much garlic.

Chives and parsley

Chives taste mildly of onion, and University of Wisconsin Extension says they’re best sprinkled on just before serving, as seasoning or garnish.¹¹ Florence and Saveur both stir them in at the very end, after the dairy.¹² Part of the appeal is simply the green flecks against the pale mash.

Parsley works the same way. The LSU AgCenter counts both chives and parsley among the delicate herbs to add a minute or two before the end of cooking.⁷ See chives and parsley.

Thyme, bay and savory

Florence infuses three sprigs of thyme and bay leaves into the cream and strains them out, then adds two more bay leaves to the cooking water.¹ You get a herbal background with no leaves in the mash. Saveur uses a little fresh winter savory, stirred in at the end with the chives.² Fish out every bay leaf before you mash; see cooking with bay leaves.

White pepper

White pepper is black pepper with the dark outer part of the fruit taken off. Gernot Katzer notes it’s often suggested for cream-based sauces where black pepper would spoil the color.⁶ That makes mashed potatoes a natural fit, even though none of the three recipes calls for it. Florence uses black pepper, Saveur freshly ground pepper, and Overhiser none.¹²³

It tastes a little different, too. America’s Test Kitchen explains that stripping the skin removes much of pepper’s volatile oils and aroma compounds,¹² so white pepper is less aromatic. Sources don’t agree on which one is hotter; see white pepper vs. black pepper.

Horseradish

Overhiser’s recipe folds 2 to 4 tablespoons of prepared horseradish into the potatoes with the sour cream at the end, adjusted to taste.³ Adding it last makes sense. Horseradish gets its pungency from an enzyme reaction, and a 2024 study of horseradish sauce found that heat treatment inactivated the enzyme and caused an undesired loss of pungency.¹³ Whether it comes across as “mild” depends entirely on how much you use. See cooking with horseradish.

Salt: in the water, in the mash, or both

The three recipes salt at different points:

Recipe	In the cooking water	In the finished mash
Tyler Florence¹	1 tablespoon salt	Kosher salt to taste
Saveur²	None	Sea salt to taste
Sonja Overhiser³	Kosher salt (amount not given)	1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

We didn’t find a test of which approach seasons mashed potatoes better. A practical starting point: salt the water lightly, then taste the finished mash and adjust. Salt added at the end is the easiest to control.

If you use kosher salt, know your brand. America’s Test Kitchen weighed a teaspoon of Morton kosher salt at 4.8 grams and a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal at 2.8 grams, so the same spoonful carries very different amounts of salt.¹⁴ ATK prefers kosher salt for salting meat because its larger grains are easier to spread evenly,¹⁵ and that also makes it easy to sprinkle over a bowl of potatoes. See cooking with kosher salt and kosher salt vs. table salt.

Bonus: Parmesan

Parmesan is a cheese, not a spice, but it’s a popular stir-in. It’s high in free glutamate, far higher than cheddar, and free glutamic acid is what triggers the umami taste receptors.⁸ Parmesan is salty, so add it before your final salt check. See MSG.

When to add each seasoning

In the pot: salt and bay leaves in the cooking water; whole garlic cloves if boiling them.¹²
In the warm dairy: garlic, thyme and bay, strained out before mixing.¹
At the end: salt and pepper to taste, horseradish, chives and other delicate herbs.¹²³⁷

Tyler Florence, “Chive and Garlic Mashed Potatoes”, Food Network. foodnetwork.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴
“Chive Mashed Potatoes”, Saveur, 2007. saveur.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
Sonja Overhiser, “Horseradish Mashed Potatoes”, A Couple Cooks, 2025. acouplecooks.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
“Experiment: Bringing Out the Best in Garlic Powder”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Carolyn Grillo, “For Great Garlic Bread, Hydrate Your Garlic Powder First”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2021. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩²
Gernot Katzer, “Black Pepper (Piper nigrum L.)”, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩²
“Flavorful Herbs”, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³
Kristi Crowe, “Umami in Foods” white paper, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Evidence Analysis Library. andeal.org · Reference work ↩ ↩²
“Taking the Bite out of Garlic”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩
Linda J. Harris, “Garlic: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy”, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2016. ccfruitandnuts.ucanr.edu · Reference work ↩
Susan Mahr, “Chives, Allium schoenoprasum”, University of Wisconsin Extension. hort.extension.wisc.edu · Reference work ↩
“Substituting Black Pepper for White Pepper”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩
Bianchi et al., “Substitution of additives in horseradish sauce”, Applied Food Research, 2024. doaj.org · Peer-reviewed ↩
Kate Shannon Levine, “The Best Kosher Salt”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2019. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩
Liz Bomze, “How to Salt Chicken and How to Brine Chicken”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2017. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩

Also drawn on

Black pepper (Britannica Editors, revised by Sohini Dasgupta, updated 11 Sep 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com

The Best Spices for Mashed Potatoes: Garlic, Chives, White Pepper and More