Potato Donuts — The Friday-After-Thanksgiving Donuts from the Leftover Mashed Potatoes

Thanksgiving was Thursday and the day held. I want to write that on the page in pen because I have spent the last four Thanksgivings dreading the holiday, and Thursday I did not. Thursday was the kind of Thanksgiving I have read about in magazines and watched on TV and never actually had at my own kitchen table.

I want to walk you through the day, and then I want to tell you about the donuts, because the donuts came out of the leftovers, and the leftovers came out of the day, and the day came out of two months of small decisions made by three people in a household trying to put itself back together.

The day was the four of us at the kitchen table at four o’clock in the afternoon. Me, Mama, Cody, and Aunt Tammy. Aunt Tammy had driven down from Tulsa in the early afternoon with a sweet potato casserole in a 9x13 wrapped in foil, sitting in the back seat of her Buick because she did not want to come empty-handed and because Aunt Tammy is the kind of woman who shows up at a holiday dinner with a 9x13 of something. She rang the doorbell at three-fifteen. Cody answered the door. He hugged her. Aunt Tammy stepped back from the hug and held him at arm’s length and she looked at his face for a long second and she said, oh, Cody, you look like yourself again, and Cody said, I am trying, Aunt Tam, and she squeezed his shoulder once and she came into the house with the casserole and sat down at the kitchen table.

The bird was a Walmart sale turkey, twelve pounds, seventy-nine cents a pound, $9.50 total. Mama brined it Wednesday night in a big stockpot — salt, sugar, water, peppercorns, a few sprigs of dried thyme, the bird in the brine in the fridge overnight. I roasted it Thursday morning at 325, the way the magazines said, with butter rubbed under the skin and a halved lemon and an onion and a few cloves of garlic stuffed in the cavity, basting every thirty minutes for three hours. The kitchen smelled like a Thanksgiving cover from one in the afternoon onward.

Mama handled the cornbread dressing because the dressing is hers. The dressing is Grandma Carol’s recipe, copied onto an index card in 1991 in the year before Grandma Carol got sick, and Mama is the only person in our family who makes it the right way. The recipe is a pan of crumbled cornbread (which I baked the night before in the cast iron, the Jiffy box doctored with an extra egg and a tablespoon of melted butter the way Grandma Carol had written on the card), torn-up dinner rolls, sage, celery, onion, melted butter, chicken broth, two eggs, all mixed in a giant bowl until it is wet and well-seasoned, baked at 350 for forty-five minutes until the top is crisp and golden.

I want to put on the page that the smell of Mama’s dressing is the smell of Mama’s childhood, and the kitchen at two o’clock Thursday afternoon filled with that smell, and Mama stood at the oven and looked through the oven door at the dressing browning, and I watched her from the kitchen table watching it, and I did not say anything because the moment was hers.

I made green bean casserole from the back of the French’s onion can, the same way every American who has ever made green bean casserole has made it. I made mashed potatoes from five russets — peeled, cubed, boiled, mashed with butter, milk, salt, pepper, and a dollop of sour cream stirred in at the end. I made gravy from the turkey drippings, which I am going to walk you through because the gravy was the technique I was most proud of and it is the same five-step roux-bechamel technique I have been writing about for weeks. You skim the fat off the drippings into a small saucepan. You melt the fat. You whisk in flour, equal in volume to the fat, and cook for a full minute. You whisk in the strained drippings (and a cup of chicken broth if there are not enough drippings, which there were not). You simmer until thickened. You season with salt and pepper. You pour into a gravy boat. The same five steps as the cheese sauce, the same five steps as the soup base, the same five steps as half the dishes I have been making this fall. The technique is one technique. The application is what changes.

Aunt Tammy’s sweet potato casserole had marshmallows on top. Some food writers think sweet potato casserole with marshmallows is a betrayal of the sweet potato. I think Aunt Tammy made it the way her mama made it, and her mama’s mama made it, and the people who have a problem with marshmallows on a sweet potato can live their own lives.

And then there was the pumpkin pie. I had been working up to a from-scratch pumpkin pie for two months. The pie crust was the hardest part. I made it Wednesday afternoon, the all-butter kind, two and a half cups of flour, a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of sugar, a cup of cold butter cut into the flour with a fork until the mixture looked like coarse sand, ice water added a tablespoon at a time until the dough just came together, divided into two disks, wrapped in plastic, refrigerated for an hour, rolled out on a floured counter, transferred to a pie plate, crimped at the edges, refrigerated again until I was ready for it Thursday morning.

The filling was a 15-ounce can of pumpkin, three eggs, a 12-ounce can of evaporated milk, three-quarters of a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a half teaspoon of ground ginger, a quarter teaspoon of ground cloves, a half teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla. Whisked smooth, poured into the chilled crust. Baked at 425 for fifteen minutes, then reduced to 350 for forty more, until the edges were set and the center had a slight jiggle. Cooled on a rack for an hour before serving.

The pie crust browned. The custard set. The slice held its shape on the plate. Mama had a slice at the table at five-thirty and she looked at me across the table and she said, very quietly, my mama would be proud, Kaylee Dawn. Aunt Tammy reached across the table and squeezed Mama’s hand and they did not say anything else for a minute and the rest of us pretended not to see them. I am going to keep that sentence in pen on the back page of the green notebook for the rest of my life.

That was Thursday. Day forty-four of ninety. The halfway mark sits in the holiday, and the holiday held, and we got through it whole.

And then Friday morning I made potato donuts. The Friday-after-Thanksgiving donuts from the leftover mashed potatoes. I want to walk you through the recipe because the recipe is the kind of recipe that turns a leftover into a treat, and I have decided that turning a leftover into a treat is one of the most satisfying things you can do in a kitchen.

The recipe is from A Family Feast. Potato donuts are soft yeasted donuts that use a half cup of mashed potatoes in the dough. The mashed potato makes the donuts tender and slightly sweet and a little denser than a regular donut, in the best possible way. The dough rises once on the counter, gets rolled out and cut into rings, fried in hot oil until golden, and rolled in cinnamon-sugar.

The math: a half cup of mashed potatoes from Thursday’s leftovers, free. A packet of instant yeast (the same kind I bought for the cinnamon rolls), forty-nine cents. Two and a half cups of flour, twenty cents. A half cup of milk warmed to bath-temperature, fifteen cents. A quarter cup of butter melted, twenty-five cents. A quarter cup of sugar plus another half cup for the cinnamon-sugar coating, twenty-five cents total. An egg, eight cents. Salt, vanilla, cinnamon from the rack. A quart of vegetable oil for frying, $1.49 (used about half, the rest stays in the freezer for next time). Total: about $3.20 for a dozen donuts.

The technique is yeast-bread mode again. Combine the warm milk, the melted butter, the egg, the sugar, the salt, the mashed potatoes, and the instant yeast in a big bowl. Whisk together. Add the flour a cup at a time until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead briefly until smooth. Cover with a dish towel. Let rise on the counter near the radiator for an hour, until doubled.

Roll the dough out on a floured counter to about a half-inch thick. Cut into donut shapes with a donut cutter (or, if you do not have one — which I do not — use a glass for the outer ring and a smaller glass or a shot glass for the inner hole, which is what I did). Let the cut donuts rest on the counter for fifteen minutes for a second short rise.

Heat the oil in a deep heavy pot to about 360 degrees. Fry the donuts in batches, about a minute per side, until deep golden. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Roll each donut in cinnamon-sugar while still warm.

The kitchen smelled like a county fair Friday morning. Mama came out of her bedroom in her robe at nine and stopped in the kitchen doorway and just smiled at me. Cody was at the table with a coffee. We ate the donuts at the kitchen table for forty-five minutes. Cody had four. Mama had three. I had two. Aunt Tammy, who had stayed over because she had drunk too much wine the night before and Mama had insisted, came out of the spare room in her pajamas and ate two and said, Kaylee Dawn, this is the kind of breakfast we used to have at Mama’s on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I had not known that. I had not known Grandma Carol had ever made potato donuts. Mama said, baby, you are cooking your great-grandmother’s recipe without knowing it, and that is the way recipes find their way back home.

The X marks on the calendar in the closet are at forty-five. Halfway. The household is holding. The pumpkin pie is in the fridge in two slices that we are saving for tonight. The donuts are gone. The potato is gone. The turkey carcass is in the stockpot on the back burner because I am making turkey-and-noodle soup tomorrow. The wheel is turning. We are going to make it to January.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the mashed potatoes — you can use leftover mashed potatoes from any meal, not just Thanksgiving, as long as they are not heavily seasoned (mashed potatoes with garlic and parmesan are not going to make a good donut). The mashed potato makes the donut tender in a way no other donut technique can match. Make these on the Friday morning after a holiday. Eat them warm. Roll them in cinnamon-sugar while they are still hot enough to stick.

Potato Donuts

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 18 donuts

Ingredients

• 1 cup mashed potatoes (plain, no butter or milk added)
• 1 cup warm milk (about 110°F)
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar, divided
• 2 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• Vegetable oil, for frying (about 4 cups)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 to 3 tablespoons milk (for glaze)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, for glaze)

Instructions

1. Activate the yeast. In a large bowl, combine the warm milk, 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar, and the yeast. Stir gently and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes until foamy.
2. Mix the dough. Whisk the eggs, melted butter, vanilla, salt, remaining sugar, and mashed potatoes into the yeast mixture until smooth. Add flour one cup at a time, stirring until a soft, slightly sticky dough forms.
3. Knead and rise. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 to 6 minutes until smooth and elastic. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rise in a warm spot for 1 hour or until doubled.
4. Shape the donuts. Punch down the dough and roll it out on a floured surface to about 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out rounds with a 3-inch donut cutter or two round cutters (3-inch and 1-inch for the holes). Re-roll scraps as needed.
5. Second rise. Place the cut donuts on a lightly floured baking sheet, cover loosely, and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes until puffed.
6. Fry the donuts. Heat vegetable oil in a deep heavy-bottomed pot to 365°F. Working in batches of 3 to 4, fry the donuts for about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes per side until deep golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel–lined rack.
7. Make the glaze. Whisk together powdered sugar, milk, and cinnamon (if using) until smooth and pourable. Dip warm donuts into the glaze and set on a rack to set, about 10 minutes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 210 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 33g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 95mg