Whoever named the potato masher may have messed up a bit. Sure, it mashes potatoes, but let’s not sell this piece of equipment short. Calling out just one of its uses is like calling a bowl a “soup carrier,” or calling a fork a “steak spear.” (Side note: That’s actually a cool name.) This tool is seriously misunderstood.
For example, it’s actually a hell of an instrument when tomato sauce is involved. Whether you’re cooking with canned or fresh tomatoes, a potato masher is super useful for breaking them up in your pot. (You don’t want to use an immersion blender, because that aerates the tomatoes and turns them a sickly orange color.) The masher will give you a nice chunky consistency and keep that red hue vibrant.
And the same goes for just about any ingredient you have to mash, whether it’s a fruit, vegetable, or starch. It's great for mashing bananas for banana bread, apples for applesauce, or avocados for guacamole. And it gets beans right where we like them when we’re making falafel or refried beans.
The masher’s greatest strength is that it’s manual, which means that you have complete say in the final texture of whatever it is you're mashing. It gives you the control to mash, check, mash, check mash, check, until you reach your desired consistency. You work it by hand. It’s the perfect tool for creating a coarse paste or mix where you want a bit of variety in texture.
And you’ll noticed that “potato masher” has slowly turned to just “masher” in this article. It’s the name this tool truly deserves. We should be celebrating the masher more like The Beatles and less like The Baha Men. That is to say, the masher is no one hit wonder.
