It’s a running joke in my family that my favorite part of any meal is mashed potatoes. Make ’em with russets, make ’em with Yukon Golds, with heavy cream, or lots of butter, or sour cream instead… I don’t really care, I just love mashed potatoes, no matter their makeup. One of my favorite ways to make them is one I learned from my grandma, and it’s a solution for when you need to make mashed potatoes ahead of time and hold them for a while. It involves cream cheese, sour cream, butter, milk, and your oven and turns out some of the creamiest, dreamiest potatoes you could want.

What Do You Need to Make Make-Ahead Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes?

Russet potatoes work best here and a 9×13 baking dish can handle five pounds of potatoes. (These are Thanksgiving level quantities, in other words.) Aside from the taters, you’ll need: butter, milk, sour cream, cream cheese, and a touch of garlic powder.

How Do You Make Make-Ahead Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes?

It’s simple, really. First you’ll peel and chop your potatoes and boil them until they’re easily pierced with a butter knife.

Drain them and add the butter, milk, sour cream, and cream cheese. (Oh, and garlic powder too.)

And then mix! With russets, if they’re cooked well, you shouldn’t need to mash and then mix. They’ll turn out smooth if you just use the hand mixer.

The mixture will seem liquidy, but never fear. It’s going to spend some time in the oven and they’ll turn out perfectly creamy.

Get them into a baking dish and cover them with foil. At this point, you can hold them in the fridge for up to two days. When you’re ready to serve them, just give them about 30 minutes at room temperature before you transfer them to the oven. They need to bake for just under an hour. During that time, some of that liquid will cook off and they’ll have a lovely creamy consistency in the end.