Не то чтобы пюре было сложным, но без масла оно получается сухим.

It’s not that mashed potatoes are difficult, but without butter they turn out dry.

Breakdown of Не то чтобы пюре было сложным, но без масла оно получается сухим.

• быть: to be
• сложный: difficult
• без: without
• масло: the butter

Questions & Answers about Не то чтобы пюре было сложным, но без масла оно получается сухим.

What does не то чтобы mean here?

Не то чтобы is an idiomatic softening phrase. It means something like:

it’s not exactly that... it’s not that... not that I’d say...

So Не то чтобы пюре было сложным does not mean a simple direct negation. It sounds more nuanced: the speaker is saying that difficulty is not really the issue.

This structure is often used when the speaker wants to reject one explanation and then give the real one:

Не то чтобы X, но Y
= It’s not so much that X; rather, Y

In this sentence, the idea is: The problem isn’t that mashed potatoes are difficult; the problem is that without butter they come out dry.

Why is было used? The sentence is about a general fact, not the past.

This is a very common point of confusion.

After не то чтобы, Russian often uses a past-tense form like было, even when the meaning is not actually about the past. It creates a kind of distance, similar to English not that it was/were... even when speaking generally.

So:

Не то чтобы пюре было сложным
sounds natural and idiomatic.

It does not necessarily mean that the mashed potatoes used to be complicated in the past. Instead, it is part of the standard pattern не то чтобы ... было ...

You can think of it as a set expression rather than a literal past-time statement.