7 Genius Potato Masher Hacks That Make This Kitchen Tool a Must-Have

If there's one thing we love, it's being able to use a single kitchen tool for multiple purposes. Take the potato masher, for example. It's big and bulky and almost always gets stuck in your drawers with its nooks and crannies. So you would think it's only worth keeping around if you make mashed potatoes a lot. But actually, there are many more uses for the trusty potato masher than just smashing up spuds — which makes fighting it out of your kitchen drawer totally worth it.

Beyond making the best homemade mashed potatoes you've ever had, try these creative ways to use your potato masher.

Genius Ways to Use a Potato Masher

Break Up Ground Meat

There's not much good that comes from having another unruly kitchen tool in your drawers if it's just causing clutter without useful returns. So instead of adding that extra star-shaped meat chopper tool you might be tempted to buy, try your potato masher for the same purpose. Simply use the masher the same way you'd use a meat chopper. Smash the ground meat in the skillet and it will break up in no time.

In addition to breaking up ground meat in the pan while cooking, you can also use the potato masher to mix up your ground meat in recipe prep if you're making meatloaf, hamburgers, or meatballs and don't want to use your hands.

Make Guacamole

If it can smash starchy potatoes, it can certainly mash up some ripe avocados to make fresh guacamole. Sure, they sell special guacamole tools, but why buy yet another kitchen gadget that you'll only use a few times a year when you already have a handy potato masher. Plus, smashing with a potato masher is so much quicker than using the usual fork method.

Blend Pastry Dough

Seriously, your lone potato masher is saving you from buying so many other large kitchen tools. And here's another example. A potato masher will work similarly to a dough cutter for working cold butter into your flour mixture. Say "hello" to flaky pastries every time!

Crush Cookies

No rolling pin? No problem. Using your potato masher to crumble cookies or graham crackers, or even candy bits for recipes is a breeze. It might not be as fun as whacking your cookies with a rolling pin or mallet over and over again, but it's just as easy. It'll make prepping batches of cookie treats or graham cracker crusts for pies as simple as can be without operating heavy equipment.

Make Egg Salad

Dicing up hard-boiled eggs for your go-to salad can be very time-consuming and tedious. So to speed up the process, just mash the eggs with your potato masher, and, voilà, you'll have the easiest chopped eggs for your egg salad, macaroni salad, or to use as a salad topping.

Cookie Press

If you're making cookies that have a design on top, like peanut butter cookies, you can easily use your potato masher to press the cookies down. And it's a good way to add sugar to your cookies too. Simply add a little water to the potato masher, dip it in sugar, then press it into your cookies. You'll have the pattern and dusting of sugar on the batch in a jiff!

As It Was Intended: To Mash

Yes, it's called a potato masher, but that doesn't mean it can't mash other foods. Try using it to mash bananas for banana bread, apples for applesauce, beans for refried beans, pumpkin for pumpkin pie, berries for your favorite jam, chickpeas for homemade hummus, and the list goes on and on. It's especially adept as a tool for crushing up tomatoes for fresh tomato sauce or salsa. This is when we start singing "tomato, tomahto, potato potahto," right?

The next time you start looking around your kitchen for just the right instrument to complete your recipe, consider your easy handheld potato masher. It might also save you from pulling out a heavy electronic gadget as well (we're looking at you, food processor). The potato masher is certainly not a one-trick pony.