Batatas à Murro: The Creamy Portuguese Take On Smashed Potatoes

Most Americans are well familiar with European cuisines by now, especially Western and Southern cuisines like French, Italian, British, and Spanish food. It's rare for one of these countries to have a cuisine that sort of slips through the cracks in popular American perception — but there's at least one for which that's definitely the case. Portuguese food may be the best European cuisine a lot of Americans don't know about, similar to but distinct from Spanish cuisine and involving interesting ingredients like cuttlefish, octopus, and dried cod.

But their expertise is hardly limited just to seafood. Another key dish in the Portuguese arsenal makes use of one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in the world: potatoes. Batatas à murro take the humble potato and turn it into something quite unlike any other potato preparation you've ever had. Our closest analog is smashed potatoes, but even that's not quite accurate — it's just the closest version we've got.

The name batatas à murro can be translated in a couple of ways; sometimes it's regarded as "mashed potatoes," but it can also mean the infinitely more delightful "punched potatoes." Despite the inherent violence of that name, though, batatas à murro are significantly less smashed than what we typically think of as smashed potatoes. The smashed potatoes you might be familiar with are usually smashed so hard that they basically wind up flat, creating something almost like little potato pancakes.

Batatas à murro, by contrast, are smashed gently. That may seem like an oxymoron, but when you see pictures of them, it's pretty clear what the difference is: though they're pressed in much the same way as American smashed potatoes, they typically wind up with only one split end, largely holding their shape, creating a more creamy filling rather than the crispy one you're likely to find the version you've probably had before.

The actual preparation process is pretty simple: you just brush the little potatoes (usually the waxy ones for best results) with olive oil, place them on a baking sheet, and roast them. You also typically top them with garlic, salt, and cheese — again, not so different from smashed potatoes. It really is the smashing itself that makes the difference, and you've got several methods to choose from to accomplish that.

The baking sheet method is probably the simplest and fastest: you just take a second baking sheet, put it on top of the first one and the cooked potatoes, then gently press down until they're all smashed to perfection. But if you'd like a little bit more of an artisanal approach, you have options to smash the potatoes individually, using a pestle, a cup, or even your palm.

Whichever method you use, try making batatas à murro for yourself sometime. There's no such thing as too many different ways to make potatoes, and mixing things up can really up your dinner game.