Introducing you to our flourless mashed potato cakes in the air fryer. Using ZERO flour, fluffy and cheesy, these are the BEST EVER use of leftover mashed potatoes.

Mashed Potato Cakes have been on my hit list for cooking in the Air Fryer for some time now. I love the taste of the mashed potato when it is all fluffed up and is loaded with cheddar cheese.
They are another favourite love of mine from childhood.
My Grandad used to make me mashed potato cakes all the time. He was a fisherman by trade and whenever they were out of fish, it was like you got the fishcakes just minus the fish and had you had these incredibly yummy mashed potato cakes.
Though I always remember him cooking me them in his rusty frying pan that was absolutely covered in lard.
The generation of today would be disgusted by the idea of lard, yet it was the main fat of its day!
His frying pan that he made my mashed potato cakes in was probably an antique and the love and attention that went into the food was fantastic.
My Grandad passed away 25 years ago and this week we are celebrating our grandparent’s generation with war week and through my week on rations, I couldn’t imagine anything better than mashed potato cakes.
Also, because we are living off rations, we saved up ½ the weeks cheese allowance to make these heavenly fluffy mashed potato cakes.
Flourless Mashed Potato Cakes

Just before I made my mashed potato cakes in the Air Fryer, I noticed on the internet that nearly all recipes for mashed potato cakes calls for flour.
It was a bit of a shock as I have never ever had flour in my mashed potato cakes.
I got talking to Dominic and he had worked for a big bakery chain in the North West of England a few years ago and he too said that when the potato cakes were cooked they never had flour in them either.
So, if you normally follow a flour recipe for mashed potato cakes, then this is how us Brits have always made them, and they taste amazing without even a teaspoon of flour!
A search on the internet shows that there are many versions of the mashed potato cake, with lots of different names, lots of different ingredients and some with and some without flour.
The only real thing they each have in common with each other is the use of leftover mashed potato.
I also find that when it comes to the UK, that they can have different names for recipes, depending on which part of the UK you are from. Plus, Scotland will have a totally different name for something.
These flourless mashed potato cakes are not the first flourless recipe we have created. We love taking the flour away and showing you that flour doesn’t need to be the star of the dish.
Here are some other flourless favourites at RecipeThis.com:
- Flourless Onion Rings
- Flourless Cheese Sauce
- Flourless Cheese Quiche
- Flourless Chocolate Cake
- Flourless Southern Fried Chicken
- Flourless Chicken Nuggets
Mashed Potato Cakes
In our recipe for mashed potato cakes we are combining leftover mashed potato, with cheese and seasoning.
There is no complicated or hard to source ingredients, just simple things that we all have in our house.
You can make a huge batch of them and freeze them for later, or just use up that spare bit of mashed potato that you have left over from dinner.
Or if you don’t have any mashed potato left over, then you can simply steam some potatoes in the Instant Pot first.
We will show you in steps 1 and 2 how to quickly make the mashed potato first, but if you have already done this, you can simply move onto stage 3 of the recipe.
Flourless Mashed Potato Cakes In The Air Fryer
Ingredients
- Instant Pot
- Air Fryer
- Hand Blender
- 2.5 Kilos White Potatoes
- 4 Tbsp Whole Milk
- 100 g Cheddar Cheese
- 250 ml Vegetable Stock
- 1 Tbsp Chives
- Salt & Pepper
Instructions
- Prepare the mashed potatoes. Peel and dice the white potatoes and place them in the Instant Pot. Pour in the vegetable stock over the potatoes. Place the lid on the Instant Pot, set the valve to sealing and cook for 25 minutes on manual. Use quick pressure release and drain the potatoes and place them back in the Instant Pot. Using a masher or a blender and adding a little milk at a time, turn the potatoes into mashed potatoes. Season them well with salt and pepper.
- Place the mashed potato in the freezer. We placed our Instant Pot inner pot in our large chest freezer for an hour. It then makes the potatoes very cold and a bit hard, perfect for the texture needed for mashed potato cakes. Though if your mash has been in the fridge overnight then that is fine too.
- Prepare your mashed potato cakes. Place the cheese and the seasoning in the Instant Pot, mix it up thoroughly with your hands and form mashed potato cake shapes.
- Place the mashed potato cakes in batches of 4 in the air fryer grill pan inside of your air fryer. Cook for 12 minutes at 180c/360f and serve while they are still warm.
Notes
Nutrition
