Potato Salads Both Sacred and Profane
Yours is sacred; mine is profane. (Two grown-up, mayo-free recipes—and one for kids to make!)
I HAVE HEARD IT SAID by officers at the highest levels of government (not really) that there should be prison time for the many crimes Americans commit against classic potato salad.
But who would decide these cases? They’d need to be masters of diplomacy and have nerves of steel. Because the problem is more complex than Good Potato Salad vs. Bad Potato Salad (the latter of which I’ll eat, anyway, especially if it comes free with my club sandwich).
The problem is that your potato salad is sacred and mine is profane. Because yours was probably handed down from your mother or grandmother. Which means my potato salad’s crime is that I don’t use your family’s recipe.
Which is also why having any opinion at all about someone else’s potato salad can get you into hot water fast.
Speaking of hot water, don’t drop your potatoes into it when making potato salad. I learned the better method from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (whose most recent book is the absolutely amazing The Wok), on one of my favorite food sites, Serious Eats, which is to start the potatoes in a pot of cold vinegared, salted water, then sprinkle the potatoes with more vinegar as they cool. Wonderful!
It took until I was a full-grown adult to realize that my Southern mother’s fabulous version— in my burnished memory, it brought the crowds at the church potluck to a sudden hush the minute the first bites were taken—was just another variation on what is considered “classic” American potato salad.
I liked it because it defied the fallback sweetness of pickle relish by instead incorporating big chunks of the world’s greatest sour pickles, from Mt. Olive Pickles (whose offices are located in Mt. Olive, North Carolina, on One Cucumber Boulevard), as well as a bracing amount of diced crisp white onion. And she poured the dressing—made with Durkee Famous Sauce rather than mustard-doctored mayonnaise—over the cubed potatoes while they were still hot enough to really soak it up.
But I honestly don’t think I could replicate it, and I hesitate to even try, because it would surely lose its rear-view-mirror magic. Plus—not to brag—I’m woman enough to know that being truly great at potato salad takes a brand of commitment and faith that I simply don’t have.
I can admit that I have a weak potato-salad core! I am happy to leave this classic American dish to the rare but much-lauded masters. (To my mind, Milly Peartree’s version is the sublime icon.)
And today, I’ll stop short of telling you to do the same. But do ask yourself: Is entering the ongoing, unspoken American Potato Salad Tournament worth the possible humiliation?
If you do decide to stay out of it, I’m here to assure you that you can still be the kind of person who turns potatoes into great salad. The key is to branch out into new versions rather than jazz up the archetypal one. You don’t want to be remembered a hundred years from now as the weirdo who brought the coconut and fried oyster potato salad to the neighborhood block party.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t investigate potato salads that challenge your idea of what potato salad can be. Or international potato salads. The day I made luscious Japanese potato salad the first time, thanks to my friend Yukari Sakamoto, was one of the best days of my life.
Thinking about your favorite flavors is one place to start. That’s how I decided to create today’s spicy, garlicky Chimichurri Potato Salad, which employed a big bunch of beautifully aromatic fresh oregano I got from my cousin’s garden.
So many great sauces beyond simple mayonnaise would be great as potato salads. My memory of my mother’s pickle-heavy version made me want a potato salad with a big pickle presence, which reminded me of sauce gribiche. (I made my first batch just a few years ago while developing some recipes for my friend Steve Sando—I really liked it on a bowl of hot red beans). Even though it’s a sauce typically draped over chicken or fish or braised leeks or tongue, I’d long suspected it would be good on room temperature potatoes. Bingo!
One universal truth about potato salad: it tends to be better the next day. Take it out of the fridge, let it come almost to room temperature, stir it up, taste it, add some salt if necessary and some more parsley if you’d like.
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