Season’s Choice Homestyle Mashed Potatoes

Whether I’m preparing a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast, or just a family dinner on a regular weeknight, I appreciate ready-made foods that I can quickly get on the table. I especially appreciate dishes that contain easily recognizable ingredients and aren’t ultra-processed.

This week, I spotted a side dish that fit that description in the Aldi limited-buy freezer aisle. Aldi is selling ready-to-heat mashed potatoes that don’t contain anything you wouldn’t find in a typical home kitchen: just potatoes, milk and cream, butter, and seasonings.

Season’s Choice Homestyle Mashed Potatoes are an Aldi Find. That means they’re only in stores for a short time. Each store gets one shipment, and they’re gone after that sells out. Aldi does not offer online ordering if these are sold out at your local store.

We bought this with our own money for review. I paid $3.79 for a 16-ounce package at my local store at the time of writing. That’s about 24 cents per ounce. One package has about three servings, which comes out to about $1.26 per serving.

This is a product of France.

If you’re looking out for allergens, these contain milk.

The full ingredients list is simple: potato, half-skimmed milk, cream, butter, salt, garlic, white pepper, and nutmeg.

One 1-cup serving has 140 calories, 2.5 grams of total fat (3% DV), 2 grams of saturated fat (10% DV), 380 mg of sodium (17% DV), 26 grams of total carbohydrates (9% DV), 3 grams of dietary fiber (11% DV), 2 grams of total sugars, no added sugars, and 3 grams of protein.

When you open the package, you’ll find small frozen pucks of mashed potatoes. They’re shaped almost like Hershey’s Kisses. You can easily pour out the serving amount you want, if you don’t intend to serve the whole package at once.

The package has directions for microwaving these. Open the bag and pour the frozen contents into a microwave-safe bowl. Place the bowl in the microwave and cook on high (900 watts) for 6-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let stand 1-2 minutes before serving.

If you’re not making the whole bag, simply adjust the cooking time down.

You could probably also heat this in a pan on the stovetop as well, but I haven’t tried that.

My microwave is 1100 watts, and these were plenty hot after 5 and a half minutes of cooking.

These mashed potatoes are okay, but they have a bit of an odd taste. After tasting them, my family asked, “What kind of mashed potatoes are these?” They questioned whether the unusual flavor was because of the nutmeg, which seems an odd addition to mashed potatoes. These almost tasted a little freezer burned. It was difficult to say exactly what tasted off about these.

They might benefit from doctoring up with a bit of extra salt or butter. Some people might like that they’re a bit basic, so you can add additional ingredients as desired. Again, these are not bad. Just … different.

The Verdict:

Season’s Choice Homestyle Mashed Potatoes are made with simple, whole ingredients including potatoes, milk, cream, butter, salt, garlic, white pepper, and nutmeg. We appreciate that these aren’t ultra-processed. They taste all right, but not great. They likely could use some extra butter, salt, or other mix-ins.