Famous French chef Jacques Pépin has shared a surprisingly easy way to give soup extra thickness and richness: instant mashed potato flakes. The ingredient can be stirred directly into the soup without needing to be prepared separately first, offering a quicker alternative to flour or a roux.
How the chef uses the ingredient
Pépin demonstrated the technique while making a quick leek and potato soup on his cooking series Jacques Pépin: More Fast Food My Way. For the dish, he sautéed chopped leeks and mushrooms before adding chicken stock and allowing the ingredients to cook together. Instead of using fresh potatoes and waiting for them to soften, he turned to instant mashed potato flakes to give the soup the consistency he wanted.
Mr Pépin explained: "I'm using an instant mashed potato here, and those are potato flakes that you put directly in there, and it gives you the thickening, the richness of it, and that's what you want. It’s great."
Why the trick works
The ingredient works particularly well for this purpose because basic instant mashed potato flakes are made from dehydrated potatoes. Unlike some other common thickening methods, they can simply be stirred into the liquid. The amount used can also be adjusted depending on how thick you want the finished soup to be.
A simple approach is to wait until towards the end of the cooking time before stirring in a couple of tablespoons of instant mashed potato flakes. The soup can then be left to simmer for another five minutes, so the flakes get enough time to absorb liquid and thicken the dish. If the consistency is still too thin, another tablespoon can be stirred through until it reaches the thickness that you are after.
When to use the trick
The trick will not necessarily suit every recipe, however, as some soups are deliberately supposed to have a much thinner and brothier consistency. But for creamy soups, vegetable soups and other recipes where a thicker texture is wanted, potato flakes are a quick alternative to more time-consuming methods.
