Idahoan Mashed Potatoes - Loaded Baked flavor - Not loaded enough, for me.
Written: Nov 04 '09 (Updated Nov 09 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Super easy to prepare, inexpensive, taste OK.
Cons: Too much sodium, too little flavor.
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for plain mashed potatoes that are easy to prepare, these are OK. But they're hardly loaded with flavor.
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| ladyconsumer's Full Review: Idahoan Mashed Potatoes Loaded Baked 4oz |
I'm not a huge potato fan, but for an occasional treat, I enjoy a delicious serving of mashed potatoes. I like them smooth, creamy, and with tons of flavor - butter and salt are required. Cheese and other seasonings are bonuses. And, I like to be able to prepare this dish in just a few minutes, so obviously starting from scratch is not going to happen.
I recently found packets of Idahoan brand flavored mashed potatoes. In this case, I'm talking about their Loaded Baked flavor. According to the packet, these mashed potatoes are blended with butter, sour cream, cheeses, bacon, onions, and chives. That sounded good to me, so I decided to give it a try.
The ingredients include Idaho potatoes, cheese blend (cheddar, bleu, parmesan, and Romano), dehydrated milk, onion, sour cream, chives, spices, and natural smoke flavor. You'll notice I didn't mention bacon. I guess "natural smoke flavor" is as close as these come, to containing bacon.
Preparing the dish is unbelievably easy. Either stove-top or microwave - in either case, you're simply mixing the contents of the envelope with 2 cups of water. In the case of the stove top, you add boiling water, for the microwave you add cold water, then heat for a few minutes. In either case, hot mashed potatoes are yours in just a few minutes.
These look, and smell pretty good. Smooth, creamy, with little flecks of chives and what are supposedly bacon pieces (but we know they're just smoke-flavored bits of something.) I have to say from a look and smell point of view, these are quite nice.
The taste, however, is a different story. I thought with all those different flavoring ingredients, that these potatoes would be dripping with flavor. Not so. They're actually pretty bland. I can taste the butter, and a tinge of bacon flavor. And the chives are quite prevalent. But without knowing the other ingredients, I'd never identify cheese, sour cream, or onions. These certainly do not remind me of loaded baked potatoes. They just taste like plain old mashed potatoes. Not that that's a bad thing - these tasted quite good - they just weren't loaded up with all flavor I was expecting.
The packet claims this product is four servings. That's because they call 1/2 Cup of potatoes a serving. Well, not in my house. As a side dish, I get two decent-sized servings from it. The per-serving nutrition is as follows: 110 calories, 2.5g of fat, 500mg of sodium, and 1g of fiber. Of course, in my house, these numbers must be doubled. That's not horrible in terms of fat, but the sodium is quite high.
Overall, this is an OK product, if you want some quick mashed potatoes. Nothing is easier or faster to prepare, and as plain mashed potatoes go, these taste pretty good. And, at just over a buck for the packet, they're certainly cheap enough. But if you're looking for potatoes that are bursting with wonderful flavor, look elsewhere; these are just too bland.
Idahoan Butter & Herb Flavor
Happy to be Lean-n-Mean!
Recommended:
No
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ladyconsumer
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