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We Taste-Tested Store-Bought Mashed Potatoes To See If Any Deserve A Spot On Your Thanksgiving Table (The Top Two Were Perfect)

Hot take: You should be buying your mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving pre-made. Here's why.

Repeat after me: I shall not attempt to make every last little Thanksgiving appetizer, side dish, and dessert from scratch.

When the holidays roll around and you're suddenly faced with hosting friends and family (or showing up to the potluck with something people will ooh and ahh over), it's easy to find yourself deep in people-pleasing mode. At the end of the day, Thanksgiving is just a meal — but the idea of making food that'll impress is enough to send even the most confident of home cooks into a spiral.

People enjoying a Thanksgiving meal with a variety of dishes, including turkey, peas, carrots, and stuffing on a wooden table
The Good Brigade / Getty Images

In your quest to host the Best Thanksgiving Ever, you make everything from scratch. You make your homemade turkey stock days before, grate a gazillion pounds of cheddar by hand for your famous mac 'n' cheese, and put together some ungodly crunchy version of green bean casserole without any condensed soup. On Thanksgiving day, you feel (and kinda look) like you've endured weeks of sleep deprivation — and ultimately it was all for a few muted "this is good!" exclamations at the dinner table. Worth it? No. NEVER.

Our advice: Pick at least a few things to buy from the store that taste just as good as homemade. One of those things should be mashed potatoes.

Person mashing potatoes in a large pot on a kitchen counter, with steaming rising, suggesting they're freshly cooked
Simpleimages / Getty Images

I love piling on a piping hot spoonful of mashed potatoes onto my Thanksgiving plate as much as the next guy, but will your guests really care if you spent 30 minutes hand-peeling each and every one? That's what we aimed to find out, once and for all, when we had our coworkers try all the top pre-made, microwaveable mashed potato varieties to see if any of them are worthy of a spot on your holiday table.

As we prepared for the great pre-Thanksgiving mashed potato taste test, we had a lot to consider:

Do instant (aka boxed) mashed potatoes count?

No. And no shade to instant mashed potatoes — I love them — but they're not the same. For this test, we stuck to "pre-made mashed potatoes." No frozen varieties, either...sorry, Trader Joe's.

OK, but what does "pre-made mashed potatoes" mean...

Here, they're the refrigerated, pre-mashed potatoes that just need to be gently reheated in a microwave or conventional oven. Normally, you'll find them in those small black plastic packages, wrapped in a cardboard sleeve, near the deli counter.

Oh, like the Costco mashed potatoes!

No, but my mother-in-law makes (aka reheats) those for Thanksgiving every year with extra butter and cream, and I swear they're the best mashed potatoes I've ever had. For this one, we decided to exclude brands that make store-prepared mashed potatoes — such as Costco, Whole Foods, and other grocers with prepared food operations. This isn't a glamorous way to say it, but the mashed potatoes we focused on are all varieties that are obviously made in a factory somewhere, and readily available nationally, as opposed to being made on-site.

Now that that's out of the way, these are the six popular brands we landed on.

Six containers of mashed potatoes from various brands are arranged on a table, showcasing different packaging designs
Claudia Santos / Tasty

From top left, clockwise:

• Stop & Shop Homestyle Mashed Potatoes

• Reser's Creamy Mashed Potatoes

• Bob Evans Original Mashed Potatoes

• Main St. Bistro Signature Mashed Potatoes

• Simply Potatoes Traditional Mashed Potatoes

• Target Good & Gather Yukon Gold Mashed Potatoes

To put these brands head-to-head, Tasty staffers Claudia Santos and Meg Sullivan converted a corner of our office into a bona fide mashed potato tasting studio.

Two people work at a shared table with laptops and equipment in a bright office with large windows
Ross Yoder / Tasty

Each of the six brands was reheated according to package instructions; most took around 5–6 minutes to reheat to steaming perfection in the microwave. Claudia flipped each bowl over, then filled them with the hot mashed potatoes, so tasters didn't know which brand was which.

Six upside-down bowls with sticky notes labeled: Bob Evans, Main St., Reser's, Simply, Stop & Shop, Good & Gather
Claudia Santos / Tasty

Then, we all lined up to try each variety, one by one, and record our thoughts — no gravy, no butter, no "doctoring" of any kind.

Person holding a bowl with several scoops of ice cream inside, viewed from above, with a patterned rug and chair in the background
Ross Yoder / Tasty

When the votes were tallied, there were some clear losers: some were chalky, artificial-tasting, or just lacked pizazz. (I shouldn't need to add a stick of butter and a heaping ladleful of gravy to my mashed potatoes to make them palatable.) But others were, and I'm not exaggerating, legendary.

First, the runner up — Simply Potatoes ($5.49)

Mashed potatoes in a white bowl on a wooden table with a plastic spoon
Claudia Santos / Tasty

Simply Potatoes microwaveable mashed potatoes really made an impression among a particularly niche group of testers: KFC fans. I am included in this cohort. Yep, they were basically a KFC mashed potato dupe, which made my tummy sing and put a big ol' smile on my face.

What we loved:

• Flavorful, but still a blank slate — These spuds packed just the right amount of salt and seasoning to taste delicious on their own, but they could totally stand up to some "doctoring," if you'd like: extra butter or even some roasted garlic would be heavenly. Without the same heavy black pepper punch as some of the other varieties, there's a lot more you can do to customize these potatoes.

What could've been improved:

• Lacking in "tastes homemade" vibes — As far as Thanksgiving is concerned, I don't necessarily think you're going to trick your guests into thinking you put time, love, and elbow grease into making this bowl o' mash. And that's OK! But our winners get much closer to truly homemade energy.

Finally, our winners. Technically, there was a tie (!), so we're breaking these out into two superlatives.

The "I Can't Believe It's Not Homemade" — Target Good & Gather ($4.89)

Mashed potatoes in a white bowl on a wooden surface with a plastic spoon
Claudia Santos / Tasty

I'm a sucker for Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, and clearly, I wasn't alone in our group of tasters. Good & Gather (Target's main private-label brand) makes a mean mashed potato. Period. In fact, doctor these up with a little cream, butter, pepper, and chives — garlic, too, obviously — and they have the potential to be seriously life-changing. Best of all, Target's mashed potatoes tasted like they were made by you in your own kitchen. If your goal is to skip the hands-on work but give your holiday guests a mashed potato that you can confidently pass off as homemade, this is the one.

Not for nothing, they're also the cheapest of the bunch. In this economy, I'll take it!

What we loved:

• Impeccable homemade flavor — The creamy, fluffy Yukon Gold potatoes and minimal added ingredients made these mashed potatoes taste like you made them from scratch. As-is, they don't pack as much of a flavor punch as our other #1 pick, but I personally think that's OK, especially if you're doctoring them up a bit when you reheat them. It all comes down to preference.

The "Wow, That's A Lot Of Flavor" — Bob Evans ($6.49)

A bowl of creamy mashed potatoes with a plastic spoon on a wooden surface
Claudia Santos / Tasty

You did it, Bob. Fluffy, smooth, and with a totally unique flavor profile, Bob Evans' original mashed potatoes took us all the way to Flavortown. While they taste more processed than Target's mashed potatoes, they're still absolutely delicious. These were the only mashed potatoes to boast a palpable sweetness (in a subtle and good way), which offsets the peppery punch beautifully. This is the kind of mashed potato I can see myself spooning into my mouth until my body composition becomes 50% mashed potato and I have to unbuckle my belt.

What we loved:

• Flavor galore — While not a dupe for truly homemade mashed potatoes, these spuds are seriously delicious and practically made all of our taste buds do a happy dance. If you like a peppery potato with a little extra something special, these mashed potatoes are for you.

In short, buy your mashed potatoes this year instead of making them homemade, and thank us later. Your guests are unlikely to notice the difference, you'll have ~5 fewer pieces of dirty cookware to clean, and your stress levels will be about 10% lower (at least!) when it's time to sit down and eat. And that, my friends, is how to have a happy Thanksgiving.

(But if we still haven't convinced you to just buy your darn mashed potatoes already, check out Tasty's ultimate mashed potato recipe by downloading the free Tasty app for iOS and Android — and explore our catalog of Thanksgiving recipes by typing "Thanksgiving" in the search bar.)

Mashed potatoes garnished with chives and black pepper on a plate, accompanied by roasted meat and asparagus
Tasty

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