667 0 0 1 10 19. At the heart of all the back and forth is access to Call of Duty and concerns around the future of game subscriptions. Call of Duty is at the center of Sony and Microsoft’s best boxed mashed potatoes. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.

Streamline your holiday dinner with this convenient side. Bringing your holiday menu to the table is already a daunting task: from the roasted centerpiece to the array of sides, the last thing you want to be doing is beating pounds of potatoes into a creamy mush. That’s where instant mashed potatoes come in. The dehydrated convenience food may sound like an odd invention at first glance, but it can save you minutes—or even hours—of time in the kitchen.

To help streamline your holiday dinner this year, we’ve tested five popular instant mashed potato mixes, and found the best one. Here are the three metrics we used to determine each mix’s final grade. Nutrition Calories, fat, and carbs weren’t serious determining factors, because most instant mashed potato mixes are similar across the board. Texture Is your bowl gritty or gummy? Are the mashed potatoes as creamy and decadent as your grandma’s? Taste Unsurprisingly, taste is our top determining factor, because why else would we eat mashed potatoes? Verdict: Unlike the other picks on this list, the Idaho Mashed Potatoes mix was made up of powder rather than the expected potato flakes.

This resulted in a dense and flavorless bowl that left little to be desired. What’s more, the pulverized taters boasted an artificial scent and an aftertaste that was off-putting. We’d need boatloads of thick gravy to mask the chemical-like flavor of this box. Verdict: While this mashed potato mix was creamier than Idaho’s, it was also quite foamy in consistency—a characteristic we could do without. In fact, the mix was so thick, it could be served upside down like a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Although Idahoan self-proclaims it’s “The Gold Standard since 1960,” we say skip these spuds and opt for one of our top-rated mixes instead. Verdict: Hungry Jack’s instant mashed potatoes had a gummy texture, which we didn’t go crazy for.