It's Memorial Day weekend, and of course, that means grill and warm weather food! I was inspired to make potato salad with some family coming over and pondered my method for this dish.
Potato salad is one of my absolute favorite warm weather dishes, but I am rather picky about it. My big thing concerning potato salad is I want it to have a bunch of veggies in it- or rather, have some salad in my potato salad! I am not a fan of an all-white bowl of potatoes with mayo. I first started on this kick when getting a recipe for a healthier version of potato salad by Juan Carlos Cruz, who had a brief show on Food Network about re-working people's favorite "bad" foods. His version has no mayo at all, and instead employed buttermilk and sour cream. I was intrigued. What I also took away from his recipe was the beefing up the veggie content. Although I find it amusing to have a specific recipe for exactly what kinds of veggies and their amounts for something like potato salad. "Use one 1/3 of a large carrot" or "one and one half stalks of celery"... what if I want a half of a carrot? I'm being slightly silly here, but you get my idea.
For my potato salad, I started with red bliss potatoes. I like the color of the skins (and the fact you don't have to peel them), plus their texture can stand up to the task. Yukon golds can make a very good potato salad, too. The trick to the potatoes is to cut them and immediately put them into a pot of cold water. This prevents browning. You don't want them sitting around on your counter sliced. Once they are all cut, check out the amount of water in your pot. It should be covering the potatoes completely, but not much after that. It's not like pasta where you need a lot of water for the amount of pasta you put in. You also want to salt the water and bring it up to just above a simmer, but not a really heavy rolling boil. If you get it heavily boiling your potatoes will suck in too much water and become water logged with a grainy texture and will fall apart in your salad. Do not over cook them for that reason as well, you want them to hold their shape in your bowl. You know they are done by inserting a sharp knife (non-serrated) into a piece of potato and then trying to lift the potato out of the water- if it falls off readily, they are done. If the potato breaks in half at the piercing, you over did it a little. If the potato gets all the way out of the water and is not falling off- they need a bit longer.
While the taters are cooking, I created my dressing for the salad. I used mayonnaise, sour cream and buttermilk in a ratio of about 3:2:1- maybe not quite that heavy on the mayo. Then I added a couple tablespoons of dijon mustard and about a tablespoon of sweet relish. I really like the tanginess that the dijon, relish, buttermilk and sour cream add, while keeping with the creamy, richness of mayo. For more flavor, some salt and pepper and a good bit of fresh dill. I have recently found some dried dill that is still nice and green in the jar and almost as good as the fresh version, so if you have that instead, go for it. There are certainly other herbs that could be employed, but for me, dill makes potato salad. Hard cooked eggs are traditional as well, but this time around I left them out. Honestly, I didn't miss them, but that doesn't mean I don't think they belong here.
When prepping my veggie add-ins, it really depends on what I have on hand and what looks good. I happen to get some gorgeous tri-colored radishes from a farm in Hadley, MA that my local produce store had this week. I love the color and crunch they added. Then some usual suspects : carrots, cucumber, and tomato. For the cucumber I used Romanian cucumbers that are very small and sweet but require no peeling or seeding. I used grape tomatoes, cut in half, but didn't add them until most of the combining and mixing was done, so as not to smash them. I like to have some onion flavor, but wasn't sure how others felt about biting into pieces of raw onion, so I used a good bunch of scallions instead.
Let the potatoes cool a bit in the colander before adding them to your dressing- to avoid any unpleasantries with warmed mayonnaise. Be sure to put the whole thing directly into the fridge to cool it down before serving and try not to leave it out of the fridge too long during a dinner party (room temperature and dairy + egg products just aren't safe for too long). I usually leave my final tasting until after it's chilled as well because you'll find some of the flavors mellow out in that time, while others develop, so you may need to add a bit more salt or other ingredient to get it just right. Be careful not to over salt at the first tasting before this resting period. If you are serving for a party and want to make it look extra special, some slices of hard boiled egg, alternated with slices of cucumber and/or tomato on top is very pretty.
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