While my daughter is already listening to Christmas music on a local radio station, eating mashed potatoes is a weekly thing in our home. My kids (and husband) love them and I love that I sneak in more than just potatoes. I’ll easily add some parsnips, turnips or cauliflower in with the potatoes, since they are also white root veggies, it is easy to sneak in and get other vitamins and minerals. I just made this the other day and I have about 1 cup left over. Here are my Healthy Mashed Potatoes recipe!

Healthy Mashed Potatoes:

You can still enjoy mashed potatoes without all the extras in them! These are power packed!

6 baseball sized organic red potatoes organic yukon gold
2 small turnips
1 large parsnip
Saving 1/4 c of boiled water
2 Tablespoon of unsweetened coconut milk (we use hemp milk)

2 tsp of Himalayan Salt
1 Tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive oil (or use organic, grass-fed butter)
1 tsp of white pepper

Peel potatoes, but don’t dice them. Peel and cut turnips and parsnips. Place them all in a pot of water above the potatoes and bring them to a boil. Once you can put a fork through the turnips, empty the water but for about 1/4 cup of it. Add the coconut milk, salt and pepper. Blend with a blender until smooth and creamy. Drizzle olive oil and garnish with parsley or chives!

Don’t dice your potatoes! Dicing your potatoes loses its vitamin and mineral content when boiled in the water. Just peel and place them whole. Less chopping, but longer boiling time.

Organic is Best! If you are uncertain about why you should buy organic potatoes, then check out this video calledMy Potato Project from a child’s science experiement

We use red potatoes a lot because it is the least starchiest of all the potatoes and have many health benefits, including having 37% more potassium than a banana! A serving of red potatoes twice as large would have very similar calorie and carbohydrate content to that found in the white potato! So you can eat more potatoes without all the extra starch or glycemic index. Red potatoes are also high in vitamin C, niacin, magnesium, iron and vitamin B6. Other vitamins and minerals found in lower amounts include folate, zinc and copper.

Use other root vegetables! Turnips are great because they are roots that belong to the family of cruciferous vegetables — the same plant family as broccoli, cauliflower and kale (and don’t turn the mashed potatoes green!). The turnip’s root is high in vitamin C. The green leaves of the turnip top (“turnip greens”) are a good source of vitamin A, folate, vitamin C, vitamin K and calcium. Turnip greens are high in lutein, which is good for the eyes!

So go ahead and sneak in a turnip or a parsnip. No one will notice and they’ll get more bang for their nutritional value!