I love German potato salad! I actually prefer it to regular potato salad, because I absolutely loathe mayo. But German potato salad? Yum! (Plus it’s got bacon – who doesn’t love bacon?)
This is next on my list, I checked out a few recipes, seems like it might go well with a little dill weed as a garnish also.
Last night I watched the movie The Week Of with Chris Rock and Adam Sandler. At one point Chris Rock told his former mother-in-law something about good potato salad and how she didn’t want to be stuck with white people potato salad.
I have to ask. Does anyone know the difference in white people potato salad and black people potato salad?
My white grandma made hers with some potatoes still a bit hard but mashed a few to add to the dressing. She also mashed egg but left chunks of both white and yolk. She would make separate bowls, one with and one without onion because some of us don’t care for them. Sometimes she added celery and other times she’d add celery seed. But what made hers special is she used her own canned bread and butter pickles and added a bit of the juice. I have never had potato salad like this because no pickle on the planet tastes like hers.
I like potato salad, but I’ve never tried making it. There are so many styles that I’m not sure what recipe I should look for to make it the way I like it.
For store-bought, I quite like Reser’s. It’s slightly yellow, so I assume there’s some mustard in there in some form. Anybody out there have a recipe that I should start with?
Resers is pretty basic. Go to any recipe site that concentrates on what I’d call “normal everyday food” (as opposed to exotic or fancy cooking) and find any recipe that gets lots of hits and lots of good reviews. If you don’t like it, try a different one next time. Once you get used to making your own the way you like it, yours will be far better than Resers.
Reser’s has different styles. They have their basic potato salad, mustard potato salad, deviled egg potato salad… and others the local stores don’t carry. I checked, and I don’t have a recipe for potato salad. But it’s pretty basic. Cube some Yukon Gold potatoes. (Or red potatoes. My parents used russet potatoes, but they tend to fall apart – which can be a good thing.) Hard-boil some eggs. When everything is cool, mix the potatoes with mayonnaise, mustard, chopped celery, some chopped onions or onion powder (if desired), a little vinegar, some sweet pickle relish, the chopped hard-boiled eggs, and salt and pepper. Sprinkle paprika over the top. You can make it your own by doing things other people have suggested. For example, HoneyBadgerDC mentioned my mom’s trick of soaking mustard seeds.
You’ll notice I didn’t include any quantities in my impromptu recipe. I just sort of wing it. Combine the basic ingredients and taste it as I go along. The good thing is that you can do small-scale experiments. Like, start with one large potato and one egg. Or no egg, if that’s how you roll. Use mustard or don’t. Maybe you want some bacon in it? Heck, make a few single-potato test batches so you can compare. Or make test batches with different kinds of potatoes. The hardest part of potato salad is peeling and cubing the potatoes, so it’s not a ‘big production’ and there’s no reason not to make single-potato ‘test batches’.
Personally, I like Hawaiian-style potato-mac salad. I make it like the recipe above (only without the mustard), and add cooked elbow macaroni, shredded carrot, celery seeds or chopped celery, and a bunch of frozen peas.
However you make it, use your preferred mayonnaise. I use Best Foods, myself.
My daughter and I love Reser’s potato salad, we think it’s the best as far as store bought goes. We had never had it and she tried it at a friend’s house one day. She was sending me pictures of the container with a message saying “ This is some darn good potato salad.” I bought it and I agree. I must get the original recipe, I’m not sure what they call it because I’ve never noticed it being yellow because of eggs or mustard.
I put our home-canned bread & butter pickles in mine. Also a bit of apple cider vinegar and some sugar to take the sting off.
I’ve never really done that sort of improvisational cooking, always like to have a recipe. But I’ll give it a try.
I don’t use mayonnaise in anything else, so I never have any around and don’t have a favorite.
Yeah, it’s not a bright yellow like German potato salad, but most non-German potato salads I’ve seen are paler. I hoped that posting a picture would generate a few hints on what to try putting in my own.
You know who used to have great potato salad? Kentucky Friend Chicken, back when they were “Kentucky Fried Chicken”.
One common thing I have seen that I don’t like is when folks add too much mustard to potato salad. I would say no more than 1/2 teaspoon is just about right if I add it at all,
There are a couple of tricks to reduce the amount of liquid in potato salad. One is to cut up the cooked potatoes and shake the pieces in a heated pot to evaporate some water. Another is to salt the chopped veggies like celery, bell pepper and onion and put them in a colander or strainer for a while—the salt will draw out moisture.
My mother made her own salad dressing for potato salad. It was pretty eggy but was definitely not mayonnaise as I have read recipes for mayonnaise. Does anyone know a cooked salad dressing that’s not mayo? She didn’t use a recipe and I never asked her how she made it. I don’t think it was in a double boiler though but it might have been. It was also pretty vinegary.
Don’t want to hijack, but I don’t recall them having potato salad. I love their coleslaw though. It’s been awhile, I hope they haven’t changed it.
It sounds like she made some version of boiled dressing. There are lots of different recipes for it. Here’s one.
I bet she whipped up some egg whites then added some oil salt and spice, possible adding the yokes back in.
It was the first potato salad I remember liking as a kid; so we’re talking 35+ years ago. I don’t know when they got rid of it (or maybe it was a regional thing), but I probably haven’t seen it in a couple decades.
It’s funny what things our brains hang on to, isn’t it?
This isn’t exactly it but I think it’s close. At least it gets me started. Thanks!
I think Mrs. Gerry’s is much better.
Aldi had some really good potato salad with onion and relish in it. The deli here sells several different kinds of potato salad, very delicious, but ridiculously expensive. I like my own potato salad the best, but will on occasion spend the four bucks on a quarter-cup of bacon-cheese-sour cream-egg-potato goodness.