My Potato Salad Saga

If your life experiences aren’t too far out of the ordinary, at least if you grew up in America, you associate potato salad with comfort food. For me, Christmas Eve, celebrated in my grandparent’s home, comes to my mind. As the big holiday meal was the next day, a buffet was laid out for munching. The star of that buffet, in my mind, was my grandma’s potato salad. The memory still makes my mouth water…the basics of potatoes, eggs and onion, the tang of cider vinegar, the creaminess of mayonnaise and added thick cream. It truly celebrated the simple ingredients.

I wasn’t much of a cook most of my life until inspired by the challenge of Indian cuisine. My adventures in the kitchen with Indian dishes began to pique my interest in the broader adventure of creatively combining ingredients into something greater than the sum of their parts. 

In all my food challenged years, though, I was known for my (my grandma’s) potato salad. Its simplicity might have been the secret. 

There are as many potato salad recipes as there are American families. Many have odd and sundry ingredients like olives, pimentos, relish, pickles, you name it. Now, I’m not going to pick on family food heritages, but my grandma’s potato salad has never met a person who hasn’t found it’s creamy tangy simplicity delicious, and most say so. It’s like ‘the essence of potato salad’ not cluttered with ingredients for reasons of texture, or color or just automatically following the family’s oft made recipe. 

OK, I’m not insulting other potato salad recipes by calling them cluttered but, on a consistency scale, I bet my grandma’s potato salad would be more universally well liked than other more “kitchen sink” versions.

I think with grandma’s version, it’s partly that the onions are chopped very fine, leaving almost an essence of onion with every bite rather than crunching down on an onion chunk every other bite or so. Also, the extra eggs, it’s a very eggy salad. You don’t have to wait for the pleasure of finding an egg chunk. And then the creaminess created by that quarter cup of unwhipped whip cream (or in my grandma’s day, thick cream delivered by a local farmer). Its creamy texture creates a pleasing sensation in your mouth unlike some, drier, potato salads where the potatoes are separate chunks, barely blended.

For many years, I remained uninterested in making another version. Then, one day, I went to a potluck and, unbelievably, the desire to try another version of potato salad overtook me. I munched on the proffered ‘unique to my taste buds’ version and couldn’t stop munching. How unusual, how interesting. It wouldn’t have the universal appeal of my grandma’s potato salad, but it was quite the taste treat. I also knew several people, including my husband, who would really enjoy how it incorporated its unusual ingredient – wasabi paste. Yes, that ‘take your breath away’ green paste mostly appearing in Japanese restaurants. Interestingly, it’s something you usually really love or you really don’t love. I’d been in the camp of not loving it – but then I didn’t hang out in sushi bars amidst which it appears as a familiar accoutrement.

Here I was, though, savoring bite after bite of this intriguing take on potato salad. What was it? I had learned with Indian cuisine that often even stubbornly intrusive ingredients like cumin added in a blend of other spices do not assault the taste buds in the same way as when used alone. Yes, I could still taste the wasabi, but it blended with the creaminess and other flavors and didn’t assault me as it does when tasted straight. I really liked the tanginess of this potato salad.

The long and short of my potato salad saga is that I actually made a potato salad other than my grandma’s for the first time in my life. Though it isn’t the comfort food staple from my Christmas Eves, it intrigues my taste buds in a very pleasing way. I requested the recipe from the gal who brought it and found there are many versions online that offered frameworks that I’ve played with. Here is a link to the recipe she shared. And…because I discussed it in-depth, below it I offer the recipe for my grandma’s potato salad.

Ruth Allen’s Creamy Potato Salad

INGREDIENTS:

1 - 5 lb. bag of Russet potatoes, peeled and quartered.
2 teaspoons of salt (for boiling potatoes)
1 large sweet onion, chopped very fine
8 large eggs, hard-boiled, peeled and rough chopped
2 cups of mayonnaise (In our family, it was sacrilege to use other than Best Foods brand.)
½ cup of cider vinegar
1 & 1/2 teaspoon of salt (or more to taste)

¼ cup of heavy cream or whipping cream (not whipped)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Place eggs on to boil. When they are hard boiled, peel and place them in the refrigerator to cool. (I sometimes boil them with the potatoes.)

Peel all the potatoes and cut them in quarters for boiling. Cover them with salted water.

Bring to a boil and keep them boiling uncovered for around 15 minutes keep an eye on them, a potato chunk should break easily in two when cut with a spoon or fork.)

Drain the potatoes and allow them to cool.

Finely chop the onion.

In a very large bowl, slice the potatoes and eggs, mixing chunks together but not stirring too much (the potatoes may be a little flaky.) Add the finely chopped onion, 2 cups of Best Foods Mayonnaise; slightly mix the mayonnaise into the ingredients. When the potatoes and eggs are slightly coated, add ½ cup cider vinegar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix until all ingredients are blended. It’s very creamy. Cover and refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight. Before serving, fold in ¼ cup of whipping cream.

Marilyn Michael is instructor for Wallingford Writers, a writing class that meets at Wallingford Community Senior Center. A freelance writer on eclectic subjects, the gift of a mentor for Indian cuisine inspired her in the direction of writing about food.