Originally Posted by
JBord
The only judgment for this is "wise". The instant mashed, while not something you'd serve at a homemade holiday meal, are actually very good and have a lot of uses. Shepherd's pie is a great example, especially for either a nice smooth or piped surface. You can use the flakes to thicken a soup or sauce, and they make good breading for fish (and probably other things). We always have a few packs on hand.
Thanks! I never thought about using them as breading. The shepherd's pie was interesting as I didn't bother crusting it, but it wasn't supposed to be a feast, more "let's clear out the freezer of some stuff since we have this"... Getting better at rotating foods before they get freezer burn.
Next project... might try to make something like gnocchi (never done it before, going to hide any evidence of failure)... then we'll see. Unfortunately I don't know how they were stored previously (looks like they likely just sat in the box they came in) but I'd keep some on hand in case of a power failure... we've had quite a few brownouts as of late and while I don't expect any blackouts to last long, having a variety of "instant" things I can whip up when hungry always helps. Ramen can only take you so far.
