Can I Use Baked Potatoes For The Brown Butter Colcannon?

Our answer

Nigella's Brown Butter Colcannon (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is a mixture of mashed potatoes and kale that has brown butter added for extra flavour. Nigella boils the potatoes in their skins as this prevents the potatoes from becoming waterlogged as they cook, giving a drier mash.

You could use baked potatoes as this will give an even drier mash, but having the oven on for an hour or so to cook the potatoes may not suit everyone. If you have baked the potatoes then you should not mash the potatoes in their skins as the skin becomes too dry and hard. Instead, halve the potatoes while they are still warm, scoop out the flesh and mash it. Also, as baking reduces the water content overall in the potatoes and you don't use the skins in the mash, you may find that you need to use slightly more potatoes than specified in the original recipe to get the same amount of mashed potato.