For the discerning leftovers lover, too much mash is a great problem to have.
Whether you prefer bubble and squeak or even a surprisingly good gluten-free lemon drizzle cake, the chilled carb provides a blank canvas for your most delicious dinnertime dreams.
For me, though, there’s only one answer: the comforting, two-ingredient meal I grew up eating.
Potato farls – a type of potato bread, for the uninitiated – take about 10 minutes, go with everything from beans to shakshuka, and can even make a simple pat of butter sing.
How do you make potato farls?
Though you can change up the recipe if you like ― baking powder makes a lighter, fluffier dough, and butter creates a mouth-wateringly delicious dough ― the basic farl dough only needs mashed potato and plain flour.
The ratio is up to you; the more flour you add, the more bread-like the end result will be, while more spuds will make the dough denser and fudgier.
Personally, I like about 25g of plain flour per 100g potato; I add a half teaspoon of baking powder per 100g of flour.
Potato farls are meant to be made with freshly boiled potatoes, which have not had the butter or milk you’d expect in mash added to them. For that reason, you might want to add more flour to cold mashed potatoes than you would otherwise.
The steps are simple; add the flour to your old mash and stir it until the mixture comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Then, tip the dough onto a floured surface and roll it to about 1cm thickness (you can see below I recently made mine way too thick, and regretted it).
Cut the rolled circle into four; if there’s too much dough to do this once, you can roll and cut it multiple times.
Then, I heat up a dry pan (I’ve never needed oil for the job) and cook each side of the farl for about five minutes, or until golden brown on each side.
Farl technically means a quarter
You might have heard of soda bread or oat farls.
That’s because “farl” just means a triangular cake, biscuit, or, eh... spud.
Per Merriam-Webster, the name comes from the old Scots word for “quarter” or “fourth part”. That’s why farls are usually cut into quarters (the more you know!).