Potato Salad – The Picnic Specialty
Doubtless, no summer picnic is ever complete without Potato Salad. With hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad makes the perfect accompaniment to picnic fare. Everyone who makes potato salad has their own signature ingredients. Some love a little fresh dill added to their potato salad. Others, choose tarragon or cilantro. Add to the multitude of possibilities for ingredients in a potato salad and the quest to make this particular picnic side dish appeals to a variety of tastes. Choosing the right potatoes is the first step to making the most delicious potato salad. Certain cooks prefer to boil the potatoes in their skins to retain the healthful vitamins. Many cooks remove potato skins before boiling. Eggs, bacon, chives, scallions, celery, green pepper, onion and garlic are superb additions to a potato salad recipe. Mayonnaise and sweet mayonnaise bind the ingredients into a flavorful experience. Certain recipes call for mayonnaise, vinegar and/or sour cream to blend the Potato Salad to perfection.
Basic Potato Salad
The original recipe for potato salad was a simple combination of potatoes boiled, yet firm. Choose Idaho, Yukon Gold and Russet potatoes for their firmness after cooking. Red-skinned potatoes tend to cook quickly to a softer texture. Potatoes should be sliced into bite-sized pieces. Grate an onion into the boiled, sliced potatoes. Add enough mayonnaise to bind the ingredients. Add sea salt and freshly ground pepper. It’s simple and easy to make this potato salad. Keep this basic Potato Salad in mind as the basis for other, more creative potato salad recipes.
German Style Potato Salad
If summer means cooking outdoors more often, it may be a good idea to create a little diversion by serving German potato salad. The recipe for German Potato Salad is different in one respect from basic potato salad because bacon drippings and vinegar are substituted for mayonnaise. For this recipe, you’ll need boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, crisp fried bacon with bacon drippings reserved, apple cider vinegar, scallions (white and green parts), a dash of dehydrated garlic powder and salt and pepper. To the sliced, boiled potatoes, add bacon bits and drippings, apple cider vinegar and garlic powder. Add grated hard-boiled eggs and finely chopped scallions. Blend all ingredients well. The traditional German style of serving this potato salad is to add a final dollup of sour cream to each serving.
Swedish Potato Salad
Swedish potato salad is served warm from the oven. It’s known in Sweden as Janssen’s Surprise more as a dish served on special occasions. The potato salad ingredients are arranged in layers. The flavor is rather unique due to the addition of anchovies, raw onion rings, sour cream and melted butter. For this Potato Salad, butter a baking dish. Boil several large, skinless potatoes in white vinegar and water and slice into ovals. Begin the first layer with potatoes. Adding sliced raw onion rings as the next layer. Add another layer of boiled potatoes and a layer of anchovies. Repeat until the dish is filled three-quarters from the top edge. Blend sour cream and melted butter together. Pour over the entire top layer of the dish. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Allow to cool slightly before serving. The scent of this dish while baking is heavenly. The taste is sublime.
Potato Salad Americana
Boil potatoes in water and white vinegar. Slice potatoes and add diced sweet green pepper, chopped chives and dill. Fold in mayonnaise, sour cream and dry mustard into potato ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chives.
