This is the fifth summer that I have sought the perfect potato salad, and finally, after dozens of veryveryclose but not QUITE there moments in its pursuit, I have finally landed the beast. It has been pwned. Its head is now mounted on a plaque above my stove. I have eaten many pounds of potato salad in my day, it being one of my very favorite things to eat and all, and I can safely say that mine is now the best I have ever had.
I am speaking of potato salad with a mayonnaise dressing here. I have already developed an extremely good potato salad, largely aped from a recipe my high school boyfriend's aunt made up, which involves red potatoes, lightly steamed green beans, Kalamata olives, and red peppers in a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette, but it is less versatile than the American beauty mayo variety. It is not what people think of when they want potato salad. It is very good, though, and I thought about posting the recipe until I realized that I just did. That's basically it; you throw those things together and dress them. It should also have parsley and basil. People love it and it's easy to pretend it's healthy, too.
Mayo-based potato salad, of
course, has no such pretensions. It's terrible for you and everybody
knows it. It is also usually very tasty; Laurie Colwin
and I are of a mind that there is no such thing as truly bad potato
salad, provided nobody monkeys around and puts nasty shit like ketchup
in it. The basic boiled potato-mayo-onion combination is always at
least OK, and it's malleable; you can try putting hard-boiled eggs in
there (meh, to my mind) or capers (but they always sink straight to the
bottom), or celery (but it's kind of depressing), and so forth, and you
will probably end up with something that the people at the barbecue
will scarf down like pigs at the trough.
I, however, was after transcendence, and there are a number of things that can go wrong with potato salad, rendering it only OK, not delicious. For instance, different kinds of potatoes -- and even different specimens of the same kind of potato at different seasons or phases of the moon or whatever -- absorb radically different amounts of dressing. Sometimes the dressing slips off as if the potato has been shellacked, and sits in a sullen pool at the bottom of the bowl. Sometimes the potatoes go the opposite direction and suck up so much mayonnaise that they become stodgy and you can feel your arteries hardening while you eat them. Stodginess is the major enemy of potato salad, to my mind. Then there's the issue of the onion element; I find that the kind of onion is less important than how it is sliced. Too fine and it will all end up as sad onion confetti stuck to the bottom of the bowl with the capers; too coarse and it will make everyone's eyes water. Also, there is the debate about chunky vs. smooth. I have had potato salad consisting of intransigent chunks of potato the size of my fist, with poor dressing permeation; I have also eaten potato salad that was basically mashed potatoes with mayo in, which is vaguely disgusting. Some people get around this by lightly mashing the potatoes before dressing them, leaving some mushy and some chunky, but this causes the potatoes to leak free starch, which makes them sticky. Sticky potato salad is to be avoided at all costs.
I have defeated all these obstacles. You can too. Here is how it is done.
A word of warning: this method is a giant pain in the ass.
It takes a fair amount of time, contains several steps that appear
superfluous, produces a great many dirty implements, and requires a
semi-obscure piece of equipment (a potato ricer). IT IS WORTH IT AND I
AM NOT KIDDING.
So, potatoes. A beautiful thing about my method is that it renders the red vs. russet debate obsolete. It truly does not matter what kind of potato you use. Buy the ones that are on sale, or grown at the human-manure organic potato concern, or whatever. Get about two pounds, and know that when it comes to potato salad measurements are an inexact science.
Take these potatoes home and scrub them and peel them or not -- this is another thing that doesn't really matter -- and cut them up into bite-size chunks. I like a smallish chunk myself, maybe an eighth of a red potato or a twelfth of a russet. This facilitates good dressing distribution. Then you boil the potatoes. You will boil them until they are just barely done. Just, just barely over the edge from crunchy. This is because they will continue to cook for awhile, and that's a good segue to the next step, and some exposition.
Dressing permeation, as discussed above, is a significant issue associated with potato salad. My mother, who is a genius, mentioned diffidently during one of the many conversations we have had on this topic that one does not necessarily want dressing permeation per se, but one does most definitely want delicious flavor permeation. Potatoes are most permeable when they are first boiled and very hot; they slurp up all manner of things as they cool down, and then become inert. One can take advantage of this easily. So while your potatoes are boiling, mix up the following in a microwave-safe cup:
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup filtered water
1
1/2 tsps Dijon mustard (more if you like mustard, but please do not use
French's unless you like hot dog-flavored potato salad)
1 large clove garlic, roughly smashed
Quite a lot of salt; maybe a tablespoon -- less if you heavily salted the potato water
Or you can just use a cup of pickle juice. It works just as well, being basically the above ingredients pre-mixed.
Nuke this for about a minute, to allow the garlic to give up the goods. Then let it sit. When the potatoes are really really really almost done, nuke the juice for another minute to get it good and hot. Then drain the potatoes lickety-split and DASH them back into the hot pot you cooked them in. Quickly pour the flavor juice (sans garlic clove) over the potatoes and stir all around. Cover the pot and allow the potatoes to come to room temperature.
While they are doing this, they are hoovering up that yummy juice, making the heart-stopping gallons of mayonnaise that are usually involved in the making of potato salad unnecessary. You will be amazed at how parsimonious you can be with the mayo here -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Once the potatoes are cool, drain them again if there is any juice left. Dig up your ricer, chase the spiders out of it, and rice about a third of the potatoes -- less for russets, slightly more for reds. You can rice them right back into the same pot.
Side note: I was inspired to try ricing in this context after eating Fogo de Chao's potato salad, which was very good and appeared to be of the partially-mashed variety, but was not stodgy at all. I wondered how this was accomplished, until I remembered that it is only the act of mashing which releases free starch, and riced potatoes are basically sublimely fluffy, velvety mashed potatoes. This was a giant leap towards potato salad transcendence.
Now you need to think about your onion element. Red, white, yellow, it doesn't matter. What matters is the shape the onions take when they are sliced. You are aiming for a translucently thin crescent -- picture the onion lovingly hugging the chunks of potato. You'll need half of a large onion for this. Cut it in quarters and shave those slices right off of there. If you are worried about alienating people, you can soak the slices in ice water for about half an hour before you put them in the salad -- I recommend this anyway, actually. Do it before you cut up the potatoes. Then add your onions to the potatoes.
Put in two-thirds of a cup of mayo. Yes, you heard right. The riced potato will enhance its creaminess to the point that it will probably be unnecessary to add more -- taste and see, though; maybe another quarter-cup might be just the ticket. Hellmann's/Best Foods please, or homemade if you make a really superlative scratch mayo (I do not). And a squeeze of lemon or a dash of white-wine vinegar if it seems apropos. And a lot of pepper. You probably won't need salt. If this is all looking too pale, some chopped dill is definitely a good idea, as is parsley, or even both -- just be sure to mince that shit really fine; you don't want your potato salad experience to be hampered by green teeth.
There you have it. And by golly, between the riced potato dressing extender and the flavor juice, it isn't even all that terrible for you.
See if you can get someone else to do the dishes, though.
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