Air Fryer Garlic Mashed Potatoes

These creamy, garlicky mashed potatoes skip the boiling and use your air fryer to give them a great roasted flavor. Garlic roasted alongside them takes this delicious side dish to the next level!

Mashed potatoes are quite possibly the perfect side dish. We eat them a LOT, and I've reached for the premade refrigerator section mashed potatoes a LOT in my life. While there is no beating the convenience that offers, the best way I've made them is in the air fryer. Essentially roasting the gold potatoes gives them a better flavor than boiling, and can be done ahead of time which is handy on busy holidays.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link.

Why You'll Love This Recipe:

• Simple Ingredients- Nothing complex or crazy here- in fact you probably have most of them in your kitchen already.
• Low Prep- We roast with the skins on, then easily peel them off after they've cooled. This also makes them perfect for roasting ahead of time!
• Flexible- There are a few ways to roast and mash these potatoes depending on what you have available to use, and the ingredients are honestly pretty forgiving too.

Let's Get Started! Here's What You'll Need:

Ingredients:

Potatoes: I'm using yuokon gold potatoes, but baby potatoes or red potatoes work well too.

Olive Oil: Almost anything that's being roasted is improved with a bit of salt and oil. It's especially important for roasting the head of garlic in, but if you're out you can reach for avocado oil or vegetable oil.

Garlic: Yes, we need a whole head. Don't worry, the roasting makes the flavor mellow out! If you don't have any fresh you can stir garlic powder in when mashing.

Butter: More butter, more better! Salted and unsalted butter are both fine- you'll probably just use less salt to taste at the end using salted butter.

Cream Cheese & Heavy Cream: These are both for creaminess. If you prefer you can use sour cream and milk.

Salt & Pepper: Salt we'll use when roasting the potatoes, and again seasoning them to taste. Black pepper will just be seasoning at the end.

Equipment:

We'll need our handy dandy air fryer of course, although you could use your oven instead since an air fryer is essentially a countertop convection oven. You'll also need some aluminum foil and a knife for the garlic. Once we get to mashing we'll need a pot (or a crock pot), and something to mash with. I like this oxo potato masher, but you could use a hand mixer.

How To Make This:

Step 1: Prepare Potatoes & Garlic

Wash your potatoes and season them with a little oil and salt. Place them in your air fryer basket in a single layer. This is where it's helpful to have a rack made for your air fryer, my set came with this rack I'm using here.

Cut the top off your head of garlic and place it in the middle of about a square foot of aluminum foil, pushing the garlic down to create a pocket or cup so the oil won't run out. Top with a glug of oil, then wrap it up tightly and place it in the fryer with your potatoes.

Step 2: Cook, Cool & Peel

Air fry at 350 for 30 minutes, after which you can remove the garlic and check the potatoes- they should pierce easily with a fork all the way through. The exact cook time will depend on their size, baby potatoes should be done at 30 minutes, these yukons needed another 10 minutes.

Then let the potatoes cool enough that you can handle them, and peel the skins off. They should be easy to remove by hand, and don't need to be perfect.

Step 3: Heat & Mash

Since the potatoes are cool now, we need to reheat them for serving- plus that butter and cream cheese needs to melt! I'm using a pan here, but you could also use a crock pot. Another option is to warm them in the air fryer again, then mash in a large bowl and serve immediately.

Add your warm potatoes and squeeze that roasted garlic out of its shell. Then add the rest of the ingredients and mash until you get the texture you want- less for a bit lumpy, and longer for silky smooth potatoes.

Step 4: Serve

Enjoy! If you want a pop of color on the dish you can sprinkle some green onion on top. Store any leftover mashed potatoes in an airtight container in the fridge.

FAQs

More air fryer recipes you'll like:

For another vegetable try roasting red peppers in your air fryer.

Want an easy snack or appetizer? Try using it for your freezer section pizza rolls or tempura shrimp.

Need more of a meal? Salmon comes together fast and is air fried quickly!

Want sweet potatoes instead?

Give these crockpot mashed sweets a try! Or roast them in slices for an easy weeknight side.

Enjoy!

I hope you love these- if you do, please be sure to come back and leave a star review! Let me know what other potato recipes you'd like to see. I'm a fan of them in all forms from potato cakes to fries to crispy smashed potatoes.