If you are a nutritionist, or a cardiologist, or a food snob, you should turn around now. Go back to your Google reader and find something else to read today. If you don’t like potatoes, you should leave too. You should go to the doctor and have your head checked.
I’ve been up since 5 o’clock this morning working on potato salad for this afternoon’s festivities, which may mean I’m certifiable after baking pies until 8pm last night. Potato salad isn’t very labor intensive, but it takes a long time from start to finish – potatoes take a while to cool, especially when you’re working with a lot of them.
Cooled potatoes
I am pretty passionate about my potato salad. It combines two of my favorite things – potatoes and mayonnaise. Spencer doesn’t like mayonnaise; as we covered yesterday he is condiment avoidant. The potato salad that I am talking about is not gourmet, it is not a “low fat” take on potato salad, and it is not a health food. This is your grandmother’s potato salad (okay, well, not your grandmother’s, my grandmother’s, but you get the point). This is a salad born of post depression economy and using what’s on hand to make a summer side dish. It’s not fancy, but it’s delicious.
Why am I sharing this recipe with you now? Well, it is Memorial Day weekend. A time filled with BBQs and picnics, salads and pies. While I was chopping potatoes this morning, I was thinking about potato salad and how much I love it, and I was trying to remember the last time I had really good potato salad… and I couldn’t remember. I know that it was probably at my sister’s house, she also uses my mother’s handed-down recipe, but that was ages ago. (I haven’t lived near my sister in 3 years, and with Spencer’s mayo aversion I don’t have occasion to make potato salad very often.) Every potato salad I have had in recent memory has been store bought and served from a plastic bucket. I have usually had a couple tablespoons, because I don’t eat meat, and my resources are limited at picnics and the like, but I haven’t been swayed by any of them to believe that store bought potato salad can rival a homemade salad. (And, sincerely, stop it with the mustard in potato salad. Just stop it.)
Ingredients:
- 5lbs of small red potatoes, boiled to cook through and cooled (skin on or off, to preference)
- 1 head of celery
- 1 large white or yellow onion
- 4-6 eggs, hard boiled and cooled
- Green olives, the number you use will depend on their size and how much you like olives (I used really big olives today and used 18 of them, I probably could have gone for a full two dozen, but not everyone is as crazy about olives as I am.)
- Mayonnaise – see that, it says mayonnaise, NOT Miracle Whip. Do not hold me responsible for whatever abomination you create if you deviate from my advice. You can use light mayo, but I don’t recommend going fat free for this. My family is comprised of die hard Hellmann’s devotees. (That’s Best Foods for you Western U.S. residents.)
- Celery Salt, to taste
- Paprika, to taste
Chopped up and ready to go.
The directions below are a little limited; I’m making some assumptions about your base cooking skills. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment.
Instructions:
- After you’ve boiled the potatoes and eggs and let them cool, peel the eggs (and the potatoes if you prefer*).
- I pre-chop the onion and celery – I make the onions fairly small (¼ inch by ¼ inch pieces) and slice the celery down the center of the rib before chopping into ½ inch long pieces. Set your onion and celery aside in a smaller bowl.
- Begin cutting the potatoes into 1 inch by ½ inch cubes, placing them in the biggest bowl you own.
- Once you’ve cut about 1/3 of the potatoes cut up two of the eggs (pieces sized similar to the celery) and add them on top of the potatoes.
- Slice 1/3 of the olives you’re using into discs and add them to the bowl.
- Add 1/3 of your celery and onion mixture.
- Sprinkle with celery salt and paprika.
- Repeat steps 1-5 until you’re out of ingredients.
- You’re ready to add the mayo now, and this is highly variable depending on how much mayo you like. I will say that this morning, using this recipe, I used about 3 cups of mayonnaise.
- Mix everything together with a large spoon, and slip into the fridge until you’re ready to serve.
Done!
*I like leaving the skins on potatoes, the rest of my family does not. I like the texture, to each their own.