Impromptu Potato Salad Recipe - Viet World Kitchen (2024)
By Andrea Nguyen
After learning how to cook a pot of rice and folding up dumplings, my mom gave me the task of making potato salad for our family. It wasn’t a boiled potato, pickles and mayo affair. It was Salade Russe, a magenta combination of beets, potato, carrot, egg, and onion seasoned with a vinaigrette. The Russian-French preparation is part of the Vietnamese repertoire, a tasty remnant of the country’s colonial past.
While I still make salade Russe nowadays, it takes a little planning because I roast the beets to concentrate their flavor. Plus, the salad needs to thoroughly chill to taste extra good. When I make the potato salad of my youth, I follow my recipe on page 186 of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.
When I’m with my husband walking to the store and we decide to make potato salad for a dinner of grilled meat, I take a simplified route. What you see here and the recipe below is what I made earlier this week. No beets were involved. We had the potato salad with grilled ribs and a green salad.
Time wise, I usually allow myself 1 ½ hours from start to chilled to deem the potato salad ready to serve. It takes roughly 30 minutes to cook and mix the potato salad. The keys to my impromptu potato salad include:
Start the potato salad before you make other dishes. If there’s meat to be marinated, get a buddy to help you with the multitasking.
Boil the egg and vegetables in the same large pot of salted water.
If there are leftover boiled vegetables in the fridge (let’s say you blanched some for a stir-fry or composed salad), toss them in!
Use the fresh herbs you have on hand – parsley, dill, mint, tarragon
Use a vertical noodle strainer to make cooking and retrieving the beans and carrots a snap. Mine clips on the side of the pot though some don’t do that. They’re well priced at Asian markets and restaurant supply shops. This is the kind of strainer that Asian noodle soup makers use. It's a workhorse.
Undercook the vegetables slightly so you can add them hot the bowl of seasonings. They’ll slightly wilt the onion and absorb the seasonings better.
Refrigerate the potato salad in a baking dish to hasten the chilling effect. Stir it every 15 to 20 minutes.
Recipe
Impromptu Potato Salad
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 large eggs
½ medium yellow onion, thinly sliced, rinsed under water and drained well
¼ cup unseasoned rice vinegar or cider vinegar
A spatula’s plop of mayonnaise (about ¼ cup)
Splash of canola or olive oil
Handful of chopped fresh herbs (2 to 3 tablespoons)
Sugar
Salt and pepper
2 carrots
8 to 12 ounces green beans
3 white or red boiling potatoes (about 1 pound total)
Instructions
Put the eggs into large pot of salted water. Crank the heat to high.
Meanwhile, combine the onion, vinegar, mayonnaise and herbs in a bowl. Season with about ½ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper. Add a pinch of sugar if you want to soften the blow a tad. Aim for a bite because the potatoes will suck up the dressing flavor. Set near the stove.
Meanwhile, peel and cut the carrots into ½-inch dice. Set aside. Cut the green beans into ½ to ¾-inch pieces. Set aside. Peel the potatoes and cut into ½-inch dice. Swish the potato in a bowl of water to loosen some of the starch, then drain well. Set aside.
When the water comes to a boil, transfer the carrot to a vertical strainer and cook them in boiling water for 5 to 7 minutes until tender firm. Lift them out, shake the strainer, then dump the carrots into the bowl of dressing. (If you don’t have a vertical strainer, dump the carrot in and retrieve them with a slotted spoon.)The egg should be done by now. Retrieve them, rinse in cold water, set aside to cool (cook the beans per the next step while you wait). Peel the eggs when they’re ready, roughly chop them, then add to the dressing.
Boil the green beans using the vertical strainer for 3 to 4 minutes. Strain, shake and dump into the bowl. Add the potatoes to the pot (no strainer needed). Boil for 4 to 6 minutes until moderately firm. Drain well but don’t rinse. Dump the hot potatoes into the bowl. Toss well, taste and adjust the flavor as needed. Transfer to a shallow baking dish and refrigerate, uncovered, for about 1 hour, until chilled. (It’s okay if it’s not totally cold!) Stir occasionally to facilitate cooling. Taste and season again, then serve. Store leftovers in a covered container for up to 3 days.
What’s your approach to potato salad? Got any potato salad tips? One of mine is that potato salad always takes more vinegar than I think.
Related posts:if you're into perfecting boiled eggs
There's no reason at all, so my advice is to leave the skins on. The skin on a potato adds a nice texture and flavor to the potato salad and it's also the healthiest part.
In his recipe, López-Alt shares his secret for perfectly cooked potatoes every time: Adding vinegar to the water (specifically, 1 tablespoon of vinegar per 1 quart of water) prevents overcooking. This one tip has transformed potato salad for Kristina Razon, the Senior Food Editor at Kitchn.
Potatoes can retain moisture. To prevent this, drain the potatoes very well in a colander or pot. Allow all the steam to escape the potatoes before mixing them with the dressing and other ingredients.
Rinsing potatoes helps remove excess starch, so it is recommended to rinse the potatoes before cooking. To ensure even more starch is out of the way, it's recommended that they even be quickly rinsed after boiling. We recommend using hot water for rinsing after boiling and cold water prior to boiling.
Always cut up the potatoes into a dice before boiling them. If you boil the potatoes whole, the exterior of the potato will get too soft and crumbly before the interior has a chance to cook through. Best potatoes for potato salad? Russet, Yukon Gold, or red potatoes (new potatoes) are all excellent for potato salad.
Waxy potatoes are generally considered the best for classic potato salad because they retain their shape, you don't have to peel them, and they have a smooth texture. People who prefer a creamy potato salad that soaks up dressing like a sponge, though, opt for a starchy potato.
Because of this combination, I suggest cooking the potatoes on Saturday afternoon, refrigerating, then finish prepping the potato salad that evening or Sunday morning and consuming within two days. Learn more about All Things Potato Salad here!
For most potato dishes it's important to add the potatoes to cold water and allow the water to come to a boil with the potatoes in the water. The potato starch can react as soon as it comes in contact with hot water, which will promote uneven cooking and mealy potatoes.
It's actually the potatoes. Being a root vegetable, they sit in dirt for a long time and that dirt often harbors bacteria. When potato salad is served at warm events like picnics or barbecues, the heat can cause this bacteria to multiply, leading to the spoilage of the entire dish.
Because classic potato salad is basically a softened potato mixture with mayonnaise, its flavor can be slightly bland. According to The Kitchn, you can perk up your potato salad with an easy, tasty hack, and it doesn't require any extra work: simply add pickle brine.
Cook them too long, and you'll have mushy potatoes. → Follow this tip: The potatoes should be cooked so they're soft, tender, and creamy. Cook them until they are just tender when pierced with a fork. Depending on the type of potato and size of the potato cubes, this will take between eight and 12 minutes.
Put potatoes in a large pot of salted water; bring to a boil. Cook until just tender, 20 to 25 minutes. Drain; let cool.
Stir together mayonnaise, lemon juice, mustard, and dill; season with salt and pepper. Peel potatoes; cut into 1-inch chunks. Fold into mayonnaise mixture.
Stir mayonnaise, pickles, hard-cooked eggs, red onion, celery, mustard, cider vinegar, salt, and pepper together in a large bowl. Fold in cooled potatoes until well combined. For best flavor, chill potato salad in the refrigerator until chilled or overnight before serving.
"From a health point of view, and I think from a taste and texture point of view, it's much better to leave the skin on," Simon says. "The skin of the potato is very high in fibre, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin B — all of those good, healthy things are in high concentration in the skin."
Answer. Potatoes for salad should be cooked whole then peeled and cut in order to preserve its nutrients. Potatoes are full of several vitamins and minerals such as potassium and vitamin C. These nutrients in the potatoes are conserved when they are steamed or boiled with its skin.
Introduction: My name is Chrissy Homenick, I am a tender, funny, determined, tender, glorious, fancy, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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