POTATO SALAD 3 Ways

Yes, I'm ready. I'm wearing short sleeves. Hey, what's up? For some reason that I don't really understand, potato salad is usually served at a barbecue as an underwhelming afterthought. This is a huge mistake in my opinion, and I am very motivated to change this fact. So today, I'm gonna show you how to make three thoughtful and delicious tasting potato salads that are guaranteed to make you an absolute legend at your next barbecue party. The first style here is gonna be classic mayo-based potato salad. It's simple in theory, but it's usually an abomination of overcooked mushy potatoes sitting in wet mayonnaise. In my mind, everybody should know the pure bliss that this style can bring when made properly. To get started, I'll need some potatoes. Specifically, I have one kilo or about two pounds of waxy fingerling potatoes here. I've made this recipe with basically every variety of potato known to the American grocery store, and in my opinion, there's no other potato that holds on to its firm interior texture better than this one when cooked in water. Once I've got this kilo of fingerlings cut into chunky coins like this, I'll grab a heavy bottom pot and drop it down on my stove. In goes my potatoes, then just enough water to cover these by about an inch, then a very generous pinch of salt. From here, I'll bring this pot up to a boil and then immediately reduce the heat to medium low. Now, these are gonna take about 25 to 30 minutes to get properly tender, so in the meantime, I'm gonna make a crucial component of this salad, and that's homemade mayonnaise. For that, I'll grab a high-sided container and into it measure one large egg, 20 grams of water, 25 grams of white distilled vinegar, and five grams of salt. If you're squeamish about raw eggs here, I totally get it. I would say buy something store-bought that has inoffensive flavor. I think Duke's is a good option there. Now, my immersion blender goes in and I'll give the egg mixture a few pulses to get it combined. Then I'll grab 325 grams of neutral oil. In this case, I'm using light olive, and then I'll slowly start spinning that in. With a tall container like this, when the mayo starts to thicken up around the top, you kind of have to stop, make sure the oil sitting there is spun in, and then repeat the process once or twice. By the way, you definitely could make this exact same recipe in your food processor. That's usually how I used to make it in the restaurant, but my only beef there is that I don't like to clean my food processor that much, so I usually go with the immersion. Also, if you're wondering if homemade mayo is really worth the extra effort, well, yes, it really is. The flavor is cleaner, it's less stale, and overall, it just makes a much better, lighter-tasting potato salad. You're gonna have to trust me and just give it a try. Now, let's check back on the potatoes. After 30 minutes of gentle simmering, I'm gonna pull a few of these out so that we can check their doneness. The final texture of these potatoes should be tender, but not chalky or crumbly, and definitely not crunchy. With fingerlings, there's a waxy, toothsome sweet spot we're looking for, and these are right in the middle of it. Next, I'm gonna drain off the cooking liquid and set these up on a little baby sheet tray to cool them down. If we put them right into a bowl, they would make themselves overly wet from steam and condensation. 15 minutes later, these feel more room-temp now, so I'm gonna flip them into a bowl, then add in 175 grams of that nice, clean mayo that we just spun up. Behind that, 80 grams of yellow mustard. The acidity and tang of yellow here is essential, and please don't sub in Dijon or grainy instead. Then 225 grams of chopped bread and butter pickles. That might seem like a lot of pickles, but the crunchy, sweet, and sour element here is very important. I would also strongly urge you to not sub in dill pickles because they don't bring any sweetness to balance out the acid from the mustard or the acidity from the pickle. Lastly, I'll add in 15 grams of chopped, fresh dill. More is more with dill, so if you wanna go bigger, go ahead, just don't skimp. Now, to mix this, I prefer to use gloved hands, mainly because that's how I decided it worked best when this was a restaurant recipe, but of course, a spatula would work fine. There's just a detail here that we need to get right when it comes to mixing. I'm squishing and crushing about 20% of these potatoes, and then I'm gonna whip them up a little bit. That's gonna rough up the tender outsides and create a background substrate of potato salad flavored mashed potatoes. I want that substrate to hold all of the perfectly cooked tender bits of potato in an almost emulsion. Now, to garnish this, I'll add some additional fresh dill and some black pepper to let everyone at this barbecue know that I'm not freaking around. You guys, I'm not joking when I say that I've spent dozens of hours trying to perfect this potato salad. I can confidently say that it is indeed very good and maybe even perfect. The potatoes are soft but toothsome. The mayo brings a pleasant richness with no mouth-coating aftertaste. The fresh dill and mustard really punch this up, and of course, there's a little bit of crunch in every bite from the pickle. Make this salad, you guys. You're gonna like it. Up next, I'm gonna show you guys how to make warm German-style potato salad. It's sharp, it's minimalist, and very vibrant. To get started into my heavy-bottomed pot, I'll add one kilo of diced red potatoes. Red potatoes for this style are pretty standard because they take wet heat a lot better than russets or Yukon golds, and they have a nice combination of creamy interior flesh with a thin skin. One more thing about red potatoes. They overcook really easily, and they go from delightfully toothsome to mushy in like three minutes. So when you're cooking these, stay frosty. Next, I'll cover them with about an inch of water and then add a very strong pinch of salt. Once the pot is up to a boil, I'll lower the heat to medium-low like before, and then barely simmer these under a watchful eye for 15 to 25 minutes. While those cook, let me quickly thank the sponsor of this video, Monk Pack. Monk Pack makes low-sugar, keto-friendly snack bars that are plant-based, gluten-free, and non-GMO. In summary, they're just an all-around good snack for anyone who's trying to eat better or cut back on sugar or anyone who just likes snacks. Monk Pack's keto granola bars and nut and seed bars all have one gram of sugar or less, only two to three grams of net carbs, and each bar is 150 calories or less. So it's been really nice having these as an option while I attempt to eat keto for like the fifth time. These bars taste like real food because they're made of real food. They come in flavors like sea salt, dark chocolate, peanut butter, dark chocolate, and my favorite, the dark chocolate, cocoa. It's super chocolatey but not too sweet with a chewy texture and just a little bit of crunch. So if you guys wanna bite into the dark mystery that is the dark chocolate, cocoa, or any of these Monk Pack flavors right now, Monk Pack will give you 20% off your first purchase. Just head to MonkPack.com and enter my code, Brian, at checkout. Again, that's 20% off your first purchase with code, Brian. The link is in my description. Thank you, Monk Pack. While these potatoes finish cooking, I'm gonna get some onions prepped up for this salad. For that, I've got a quarter of a red onion here and my Japanese-style mandolin. Now, I'll just combine the two to get this onion shaved into thin, but not too thin, slices. And that looks good. Now, once I've got this thing sliced up, I'm gonna grab a little strainer and then take it over to my sink and rinse off any aggressive, sulfur-y edge. From there, I'll drop the onions into a medium bowl and then top them with 50 grams of cider vinegar and 20 grams of sugar. I'll stir those to combine and let those onions macerate and marinate for the remainder of the cook time on these potatoes. Doing this gives them a kind of pseudo pickle and that's gonna bring a really nice balance to this salad. Now, once those are marinating, I'll set them off to the side and then grab a 10-inch saute pan and drop it over medium-low heat. Into that, I'll add eight slices of bacon, or about 250 grams. I cut this bacon after it had a chance to get very cold in the freezer for about 15 minutes. That makes it a lot easier to get clean, uniform, small pieces like this. Now, I'll very slowly cook this bacon over medium to low heat for about 15 minutes while stirring frequently to make sure things aren't getting stuck or burnt. That can happen really fast. Now, after about 10 minutes in total, this bacon has rendered just about all of its fat and the fat has crisped up and fried that bacon into a nice golden red color. Oh, I'll mention, save all that fat. That's gonna dress our potatoes in a minute and make them taste very dope. Speaking of potatoes, I'm gonna snatch a few of these out of the pot and check them for doneness. As you can see, these are soft, but not crumbly. When I put a little bit of pressure on them, they eventually crush, but not right away. I'm gonna call these done. Now, I'm gonna drain these off and then add all of my rendered bacon and fat. Behind that, I'll add in 60 grams of nice tasting whole grain mustard. I really like this Ma-Yi, my male. How do you say this? I really like this brand. Then 15 grams of chopped fresh parsley and three grams of ground black pepper. Also not pictured is three grams of salt. Now, while everything is still hot, I'm gonna jump into the bowl with a spatula and stir this to combine. I'll start by folding to get things mixed together and then I'll switch to a more vigorous shake and stir maneuver. Stirring this hard gets the mustard in motion and helps hold the vinegar and bacon fat into an emulsion. I think I worked mine for the camera just a little bit too much and smushed the potatoes just a little bit more than I wanted. Overall, they still look very good, though. They've held onto their soft, toothsome red potato texture and now they're all seasoned up with oniony vinegar and bright, pungent grain mustard. You guys, this style is a great variation on the more mayo-based classic, in my opinion, and it's perfect for a grill out where bratwursts are gonna be featured. Lastly, we're gonna make something that is so pleasing to the human mouth, it's almost shameful. I'm talking about loaded baked potato salad. Is that cheese in there, dude? To get started, I'm gonna grab America's favorite baking potato, the classic, for a reason, russet potato. The skin on these can be kinda thick and papery, though, so I'm gonna peel some of it off. To me, the roasty skin is still needed in a baked potato salad. I just don't want too much of it in the mix. Quickly, I'll give these potatoes a medium dice. Once I've got them all cut down, I'm gonna scoot them into a medium bowl and add in a good, generous squeezer of olive oil, then two strong pinches of salt. I'll shake all that to combine and then I'll lay it out on a sheet tray to roast. Wait a minute, though. I'm gonna grab a shitty sheet tray with some patina on it. For some reason, I find that I get much better color and less stickage on my potatoes when I use a sheet tray with a ton of miles on it. I guess because it's kind of seasoned with baked-on oil? That makes sense. Now, I'm gonna load this into a 450F oven and roast it for 25 to 35 minutes. 35 minutes later, I'm gonna pull these out so that we can take a look. I'll mention that I came back once while roasting and flipped them so that I could get some additional potato surface hitting this hot pan. These russets cooked up good, though, you guys. They got a touch of crispness on the edges and they're creamy throughout, perfect for a salad. Now, I can't dress this thing with mayo while it's hot, so I'm gonna set them off to the side to cool for a minute while I prep the rest of this salad. First, I'll need to grab some flavorful cheddar cheese and give it a grate on the feather side of my box grater. At first, I was a little scared of putting cheese into a mayo-based salad. Like, maybe the chef police would knock on my door and be like, hey, man, that's an abomination. To that, I say, have you tried it, bro? Because it's really sick. Behind the cheese, I'm gonna get the other loaded part of this baked potato dialed, and that's the bacon. Same as before, I'm slowly rendering and frying off eight slices, about 250 to 300 grams of small diced, smoky bacon. Once the bacon is fully rendered crispy and reddish golden brown, it's time to build this salad. First, I'll scoop my cooled off, roasted, rusted potatoes into a medium bowl. Actually, I'm gonna scoop out about a quarter of them first and then I'll scoot the rest into the bowl. I'll give the reserved potatoes a thorough chopping to make sure that this salad has a more dynamic, lively texture. Since these are roasted, they're not gonna smear or crush like a boiled potato would, and if we didn't do this, there would be no intermediate texture to bind this together. Once these are all chopped up, I'm gonna scoot them into the bowl and then top them with all of that bacon that we just rendered. All of the fat can come along too, unless it's like an absolutely filthy amount. Use your judgment there. We don't want a total gut bomb here. Then in goes 200 grams of that nice mayo that I showed you guys how to make earlier, 150 grams of sour cream, 75 grams of feather shredded, medium sharp cheddar cheese, and then 100 grams of thinly sliced scallions. To finish, I'll add in three grams of cracked black pepper and then I'll jump into the bowl and stir to mix this together. The combination of whole roasted potatoes with the smeared and chopped creamy ones is gonna give us a pretty awesome texture. Once that's all combined, I'm gonna give it a taste. Oh my God. This is borderline not potato salad. I don't know exactly what to call it other than totally insane. It kind of tastes like cheesy potato casserole meets Taco Bell's roasted potato things meets a perfect steakhouse loaded baker. Oh, and it's also pretty close to ruffle sour cream and cheddar. And yeah, you tell me you're not gonna eat a shameful amount of this salad given the opportunity. It's crispy, it's roasty, it's smoky, and did I mention it's cheesy? Whether you choose to go with classic, German, or loaded baked, hopefully you guys feel like you've got three delicious, thoughtful options to eat outdoors this summer. Let me know which one you're gonna be making and what you're gonna be serving with. Let's eat this thing.