5 Fabulous Potato Salads

A resident at the facility where I act out The Day Job brought up to me today that the year is half over already. I think I kept my shriek of existential dread internal as I agreed with her and made some comment about finally getting used to writing 2019 on things. I then salved my wounded soul with the thought that weather-wise and botanically speaking, there’s still a lot of summer left at least. And lots of summer eating including, among other delightful things, potato salads.

Potato salad can be anything from comfort food to summer herb and vegetable showcase. Here are some links to potato salad recipes from The Messy Apron Archives that represent a variety of needs and tastes. I hope they inspire your summer gathering menus, especially for the upcoming extra-long 4^th of July weekend.

Many of us Midwesterners think of creamy mayonnaise-based potato salads first and foremost, and we each probably have our favorite recipe. Here’s the way I like to make Classic Potato Salad, with bell peppers and hard-boiled eggs. You can certainly adapt it, and even use this vegan mayonnaise to change things up.

This Potato Salad with Chinese Flavors has added bacon and a dressing punched up with soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil. The fiery Chinese hot mustard is the secret ingredient that makes it extra special.

This Lemon Herb Potato Salad features plenty of fresh herbs and lemon and has a lighter, mayo-free dressing. I love to make it when my herb garden is in full swing.

These last two recipes really put the “salad” in “potato salad” with their inclusion of lots of vegetables. Potato Salad with Fresh Vegetables and Olives features my favorites of high summer: cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers, plus fresh basil, too.

And Potato, Broccoli and Green Bean Salad with Tarragon Mustard Dressing goes extra-green with veggies. The zesty Dijon dressing laced with tarragon takes it in a different direction than other creamy potato salads.

Don't let existential dread cloud your summer fun. Comfort yourself or your summer dinner party guests with a customized potato salad that suits your personal needs and enjoy!

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The Way I Make Classic Potato Salad

Even though I’ve never posted a recipe for a classic potato salad with a mayonnaise-based dressing, it really is my favorite way to serve up cold potatoes with a summer meal. It can be changed up, varied, and improvised upon, and I often do those things simply to take advantage of what I have on hand, or make up for what I don’t have. I think a lot of gourmet cooks turn their noses up at this potentially gloppy and uninspired dish, but I love it.

Of course you can’t get too far toward making a good potato salad without good potatoes. That being said, I find that freshness and quality, rather than type of potato, are the keys. I make this with whatever potato I happen to be liking at the moment, often small, red-skinned “new” potatoes, which are plentiful here in the summer. Whatever they are, the potatoes need to be cooked with their skins on in a big pot starting with cold water. The skins keep the potato flesh together during cooking rather than having it disintegrate away at an exposed surface. Starting with cold water helps keep the potatoes from turning squishy on the outside while the inside remains undercooked. If the potatoes have thin skins, I will leave the skins on to serve them, but I will peel Russet or other thick-skinned potatoes once they have cooled. (A cold cooked potato peels very easily.)

For the dressing, I like a combination of mayonnaise and sour cream with a highlight of Dijon mustard. Other mustards are good, too, and plain yellow mustard was probably what was in the delicious potato salads on which I grew up. A bit of dill makes everything better, in my opinion. Fresh dill is my preferred option, although I would choose to use dried dill rather than nothing at all.

I really like to combine my potatoes with onion, celery, and bell pepper. Green pepper is fine, and I’m happy to use it, but sweeter red, yellow, or orange peppers are even better. I’ll also include other vegetables, such as radishes, and there are probably many other vegetables that would work here, too. I find that if I toss together the cooked potatoes and the vegetables with some salt before dressing the salad, the flavor is somehow enhanced more effectively with less salt.

I also stir some chopped hard-boiled egg into my salad, but you wouldn’t have to. In fact, if you use a vegan mayonnaise, like this one, and omit or replace the sour cream with a vegan option, you can make a vegan potato salad. You wouldn’t want to miss out on such a traditional staple just because you do not use eggs and dairy in your cooking, would you?

The way I see it, a creamy mayonnaise-based potato salad is summer fare that is not to be neglected. Done poorly, I suppose such a dish can really rain on your parade, but there’s a reason such things earn the title of “classic.” Potato salad as it is familiar to many in this country will be around for a long time, and I for one am not afraid to admit how much I enjoy it.

Classic Potato Salad

Full fat or reduced fat mayonnaise and sour cream are both good here. I do not recommend fat free versions.

1 pound potatoes, skin on

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ cup finely chopped celery

1 medium-size bell pepper, any color, chopped

½ teaspoon coarse salt, divided

¾ cup mayonnaise

¼ cup sour cream

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

2 hard-boiled eggs, shells removed, chopped

1. Leave the potatoes whole and do not peel. Place the potatoes in a large pot. Fill the pot with cold water, covering the potatoes by at least 2 inches. Bring to a boil. Gently boil until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes for small potatoes, longer for larger ones.

2. Drain the potatoes and cool completely. This can be done a day ahead.

3. Peel the potatoes if desired. I do not peel them if the skins are tender and relatively unblemished. Cut into bite-size cubes (1/2 – 1 inch, or to taste) and place in a large bowl. Add the onion, celery, and bell pepper. Sprinkle in ½ teaspoon salt. Toss together to combine.

4. To make the dressing, combine the mayonnaise, sour cream, Dijon mustard, black pepper, dill, and remaining salt in a small bowl. Pour over the potato mixture and stir gently to coat well.

5. Add the hard boiled egg and toss together gently to combine. Taste for seasoning and creaminess, and add more salt or other seasonings or more mayonnaise or sour cream to taste. Chill until ready to serve.

Makes about 6 side dish servings.

Other recipes like this one: Lemon Herb Potato Salad; Potato, Broccoli, and Green Bean Salad with Tarragon Mustard Dressing; Potato Salad with Chinese Flavors; Potato Salad with Fresh Vegetables and Olives

Potato Salad with Fresh Vegetables

I get excited about pretty simple things. Like compost (no photo available, you’re welcome). Like volunteer pumpkin vines with at least 7 pumpkins on them.

 

Like the fact that you can go so many different ways with potato salad. Since I’ve been posting way too infrequently this summer, it was actually quite some time ago that I made this light potato salad with simple rice vinegar dressing, fresh vegetables and olives. This dish is still quite appropriate to the season, perhaps even more so than when I made it. There are lots of great cherry tomatoes available around here (specifically in my garden, right next to the pumpkin patch) as well as bell peppers and cucumbers.

 

I used green bell peppers because really large and delicious ones have been available locally, but the bells in brighter colors (orange, red, yellow) are sweeter and maybe even prettier.  I also had some small, locally grown “new” potatoes that had plenty of nice, creamy, earthy flavor of their own.

 

Really, exactly which type of potato or what kinds of vegetables you use are a matter of personal taste and availability. Each of the lines in the list of ingredients below could begin with the word “about” (or “approximately” if you’re more sophisticated.) Tossing together what looks good and what tastes good and adjusting the seasonings is probably the best way to go for simple summer salads. Not only is that a great way to celebrate summer produce, but it’s also a great way to take it easy. Summer salads don’t need to be obsessed over, after all. They should be laid back and stress free. And, with its relatively small amount of oil and complete lack of mayonnaise, this one can be guilt free as well.

 

 

Potato Salad with Fresh Vegetables and Black Olives

Adapted from Cooking Light April 2008

Scallions would be a nice replacement for the onion.

1 ½ pounds small potatoes

¼ cup seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon coarse salt, plus more to taste
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1 cup chopped cucumber, peeled if skins are tough or greased
1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
1 cup chopped bell pepper
¼ cup chopped onion
¼ cup finely chopped (or torn) fresh basil
½ cup sliced ripe olives

1. Place the potatoes in a large pot of cold water to cover by a few inches. Bring to a boil and cook

until the potatoes are just tender. Drain and let stand until cool enough to handle.

2. To prepare the dressing, combine the rice vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Whisk to combine.

3. When the potatoes are still a little warm, cut them in halves or quarters. Add them to the bowl with the dressing. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to coat. The warm potatoes will absorb the dressing more than cold potatoes would. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper or vinegar if desired.

Makes about 10 side-dish servings.

 

Other recipes like this one: Lemon Herb Potato Salad; Potato, Broccoli and Green Bean Salad withTarragon Mustard Dressing; Potato Salad with Chinese Flavors

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Potato Salad Goes Green

In a bowl of potato salad there was some green. Not a nasty, dirty, wet green with the fuzz of mold and an oozy smell, nor a dry, pretentious green, not worth sitting down to and not fit to eat: it was potato salad, and that means comfort.

And those of you who haven’t committed the first lines of The Hobbit to memory can enjoy this potato salad, too. It’s just as easy as any other potato salad, but can help you use up some of the other stuff you have languishing in the refrigerator..er..um…has more healthy and delicious green vegetables than you might typically see in this summer staple food.

This all started with a creamy tarragon dressing recipe for potato salad that I think I clipped from Martha Stewart Living Magazine ages ago. My tarragon plant survived the winter and has been growing nicely on my patio, so it was time to use some. I also had lots of broccoli and green beans from the CSA (the potatoes, creamy and sweet Yukon gold new potatoes with very thin skins, were from there as well.) Those greener things were destined to supplement the potatoes in a nice and tasty salad.

I steamed the beans and broccoli just a bit. I still wanted them to have some crunch and still taste like vegetables and not boiled green mush, but I also wanted to take the harder raw edge off of them so they would be more pleasant to eat in the salad. I used to microwave to steam them, much like I did for the asparagus in this recipe, then shocked them by running them under cold water, drained them well, and chilled them until I was ready to finish the salad.

The potatoes I boiled in their skins until cooked through, which, to me, is the only way to prepare them for salad. I let them cool, then chilled them as well. I find that cooked potatoes slice much more neatly when they are completely cold. You could peel the potatoes after cooking them, but since mine were organic, I left the very soft and thin skins intact.

The dressing started out as a simple vinaigrette laced with tarragon and thickened with sour cream. I let it stay pretty creamy, but I really bumped up the Dijon mustard content considerably and cut back the sour cream. The result was nice and tangy and the Dijon goes well with the tarragon, which is present but not overwhelming. You could use more if you love it, or replace it with another herb if wish. I think thyme would be good, and so might basil, thinly sliced, or chiffonade if you cook with your pinky finger extended.

I suppose the flavors and style of this salad might be considered French-influenced. Really for me, it was influenced by the fabulous fresh and green summer vegetables I happened to have on hand. That and a love of new potatoes in salads. I could eat potato salads every week and they’re so easily variable, who knows what I’ll be able to try next…. Spuds “go ever ever on.”


Potato, Broccoli and Green Bean Salad with Tarragon Mustard Dressing

1 pound boiling potatoes (I had Yukon gold new potatoes), about 4 medium-size potatoes
8 ounces broccoli crowns, cut into bite-size florets
4 ounces green beans, stem ends trimmed, cut into 1-2 inch pieces
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon

1. Scrub the potatoes clean. Place them in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and cook, boiling moderately until the potatoes can be pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes (but rely on tenderness more than time). Cool the potatoes, then chill completely.

2. Place the broccoli and beans in a microwave-safe container. Add a splash of water. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Punch several holes in the plastic with a knife. Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Carefully remove the plastic wrap, avoiding any steam. Plunge the broccoli and beans in ice water or run very cold water over them to stop the cooking. Drain well and chill.

3. To make the dressing, combine the vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Slowly add the olive oil, whisking until well-combined. Stir in the sour cream and tarragon. Set aside.

4. Peel the potatoes if desired (I didn’t). Quarter them and cut into about ½ inch slices. Place in a large bowl with the broccoli and beans. Add the dressing and toss well to combine.

Makes 6-8 servings. Leftover salad will keep for a few days refrigerated.


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