Once you have those few ingredients, get ready to start cooking! Start off with the first and simplest step, which is…

1. Peeling and Chopping Potatoes: Get 3 potatoes and start peeling the skin off of them completely. Once they’re all nice and yellow across the surface, start chopping them into small cubes. The cubes aren’t exactly necessary since you’re going to be mashing the potatoes anyway. But, the small size makes it easier for them to boil all across, and makes the mashing part of the recipe a whole lot easier since you can focus on little bits instead of one huge potato.
2. Boil the Potatoes: Get a large pot and fill it up with 4-5 cups of water. Put the potatoes you sliced up in the last step inside this pot, and start bringing the water to a boil. Keep the process going until the potatoes are noticeably soft. To test whether or not that’s the case, you can just use a fork to stab the surface and see if it goes through easy enough. If the surface takes a bit of force to break through, that means the potato slices need some more time to boil.
3. Mash ‘Em Up: Now it’s time for the most fun part of the recipe; mashing! Drain all the hot water out of the potatoes and place the pieces into a deep bowl. Once inside, mash them up until there aren’t any noticeably large lumps left. The best way to spot lumps is to take a tiny break between all the mashing to use a spoon and move the pieces around to see if anything at the bottom is still intact.
4. Add Ingredients: Once mashed, all you have to do is give the potatoes their flavor before serving them. To do that, you need 2 tablespoons of butter and ½ cup of milk. Once both of these are on top of the potatoes, mix everything together as well as you can to make sure both ingredients are completely absorbed. After that, just cover the whole thing with salt and pepper, as per your personal preference. Mix this too, and make sure that it’s evenly spread out.
5. Serve and Enjoy: Your mashed potatoes are now ready! You should serve them up while they’re hot, because that’s the best way to enjoy them whether you’re eating them with another meal or just as a little “hold-me-over” snack.