Roasted Garlic Parmesan Mashed Potatoes are the perfect accompaniment to your traditional Christmas ham. No need for gravy with these flavorful potatoes. Nutty and sharp, these are bound to be a new favorite.

Today is Joel’s 32nd birthday, yay! We celebrated on Saturday with my family at our favorite special occasion restaurant. After, my parents took the kids home and Joel and I went to see the new Star Wars movie. There’s the proof that I love that man. He was so excited and I did my best to pretend I was too. All I had to do was think about the popcorn.

I’m making homemade pizza tonight and picked up a Nothing Bundt cinnamon swirl cake upon his request. He was worried he would hurt my feelings that he wanted a store bought cake and I’m all “thank the heavens, that’s one last thing I have to do this week.” Plus, have you had those cakes. Oh my goodness are they good.

I’m glad it takes 30 minutes to get to the store otherwise we might be a little heftier around the middle. We also picked up a little bundtlet of this month’s flavor, peppermint chocolate chip. It seemed wrong not to. I’ll report back on how it is.

Now that his birthday has passed, it’s full steam ahead for Christmas. This year we are doing Christmas Eve and morning at home then heading to my parents house for the rest of the day where we will open more presents and gorge ourselves on ridiculously delicious food. What do you guys do for Christmas dinner? We go the traditional ham route with all our family favorite side dishes. And of course way too many desserts.

Potatoes are a must but without gravy they can fall flat and seem flavorless. But no worries, that’s where these Roasted Garlic Parmesan Mashed Potatoes come in. They taste so delicious on their own they don’t need gravy. You have to understand the importance of this statement. I adore gravy. I’ll never give it up. But these are so dang good on their own. I promise.

Roasted garlic provides a rich, nutty and slightly sweet flavor that really ups these potatoes game. If you’ve never roasted garlic, don’t worry because it’s super easy. For this recipe, you simply place 8 peeled cloves of garlic on a square of foil, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, close it up and roast for 25 minutes. Once it’s roasted it will be super soft and ready to be smashed.

And while that’s going on you can peel, chop and boil the potatoes. Yukon gold potatoes that is. They make THE best mashed potatoes in my opinion.

I added parmesan to the potatoes for another nutty, sharp flavor to the potatoes and rounds out the sweetness of the roasted garlic. Plus, cheese makes everything better.

These potatoes are the perfect side to your Christmas ham, or whatever you make. Tell me all about your holiday dinner plans in the comments below.