The Best Potato Salad You'll Ever Make

I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor, and today I'm gonna show you how to make the best potato salad. This recipe is simple and quick. You don't need a lot of ingredients. You can do this, I promise. This is potato salad 101. Potato salad comes in a lot of different forms. Everyone has their own preference. My perfect potato salad is the way that my grandmother used to make it. It is very simple, but it is extremely delicious. It's boiled potatoes. A Yukon Gold, to me, is one of the best waxy potatoes. It holds its shape. It has great flavor and texture. For the most part, waxy potatoes, like a Yukon Gold, don't get fluffy. They get more of a creamy texture when you cook them, which is exactly what you want for a good potato salad. I always start out with cold water. My potatoes are washed. I scrub the skins. I know you've had waterlogged potatoes. They're wet, they're squishy, and it's not good. I find if you leave the skins on, you kind of have that jacket on them, and the potatoes don't get waterlogged. So potatoes into cold water, turn it on. If we boil the potatoes the whole time, they kind of jump around the pan, and they get beat up. The skins come off. We lose a lot of starch. So let it come to a boil, and then lower it to a simmer. It's probably gonna take about 35 to 40 minutes to cook these potatoes, so you gotta be patient. Sometimes people will wanna put salt into this water. I stay away from that. If I have peeled potatoes in the water, I will salt the water, because the salt's actually gonna get into the potato. Here, I have the skins on, so salt's not getting in. I'm also gonna rinse these potatoes and chill them down under cold water, so that rinsing and chilling is gonna wash off any seasoning anyway, so I choose not to salt the water. Potatoes have been in the pot simmering away happily for about 20, 25 minutes, and now what I like to do is add my eggs. We egg need about 10, 12 minutes, so I'm gonna put my eggs in. The potatoes and the eggs will be done at the same time, and they all cook happily away together. You can see that I have a little bit of falling apart potatoes, but they're not shredding and falling apart. Now, how do I know the potatoes are done, right? This is a raw potato. If I stab this raw potato, what happens? It doesn't fall off. It holds on real tight, but if I stab a potato that is mostly cooked, it slips right off of my paring knife, and that's what I want. It should slip off my paring knife. It should not fall apart. These are perfect. Let's drain them. I got my potatoes in the pot. I've run some cold water over them, so they're easy to handle, and as a chef, I might wanna ice these down, and that's okay. If you have the ice and you wanna do it, I'm gonna let them cool so that I can handle them, and then we can finish this salad. So now all I really wanna do is peel everything and get into my bowl. I'm not gonna use a cutting board. I have a bowl for all my waste. I have a bowl that my salad's gonna go into. I get a paring knife. Just remember these are cooled off, and I can hold them in my hand without being uncomfortable. If they're still hot, you can always put them in a towel and peel them, but for the most part, I like to cool them so they're easy to peel. I can tell that this potato is cooked right on the money because the outside is not kind of shredding and falling apart, and then when I stick my knife through, it just has a little bit of resistance. So what I like to do is cut my potato in half, and a half again, and then just into nice chunks. Potatoes are cut. Now we can peel the eggs, and what I like to do with eggs is just kind of bang them on the table. There's almost always a little air gap in one side, and that always helps your eggs peel better, and then we peel. Eggs are really difficult to peel while they're still super hot. You should always cool them down a little, and then this membrane separates away from the egg, and they're a lot easier to peel. So not cold, not hot, but somewhere in between, and these shells come off like a dream. My eggs are peeled, and I have a really great trick on how to chop these up. No fuss, no muss. Get yourself a resting rack, put it on top, take your egg, smash it through. Look at our eggs are chopped. Potato salad for egg salad. This is the right way to do it. It's super quick and efficient. I am going to save two eggs for garnish. I'm just gonna slice them on top, but chopping eggs couldn't be any simpler than that. Time to make our salad. The ingredients for this salad is super simple. It's just potatoes, eggs, olives, mayonnaise, and vinegar. Of course, salt and pepper. So you kinda gotta get these right. So you have to taste as you go. So I'm gonna start out with just a little bit of black pepper, not a lot, and a decent amount of salt. Remember, there's no salt in this yet. I'm using kosher salt. Whenever I salt things, people think that I'm over-salting, but kosher salt has big flakes. You can see them better. So it looks like I'm putting a lot of salt in, but I'm not. Distilled vinegar. You could be tempted to use fancy vinegar for this. I want white distilled. It's got a clean flavor. It's nice and acidic. I put in about a quarter cup, maybe a little less, and I like to put that over the potatoes before I put the mayonnaise on, just for the fact that the potatoes will soak it up. So now I'm just gonna kinda give it a little toss with that salt, pepper, and vinegar. I have some of these green olives with pimento in them. I think it adds some color, a little pop of salt. I'm just gonna add these whole and save some on the side for garnish later, just to kinda stud on top. Last but not least is mayonnaise. I like Hellmann's. A good prepared mayonnaise is key here. Do not use Miracle Whip. Miracle Whip is gross. Throw it out the window. Mayonnaise every single time. And you don't wanna be shy with this. You wanna make sure that there's enough mayonnaise that you don't have a dry potato salad. You want it to be dressed really well. So at this point, we just kinda give it a little toss. What's gonna happen is as this salad sits, it will soak up some of that mayonnaise. So you might have to readjust after it sits for a little while, but I want it to be nice and creamy and delicious. Make sure the egg is studded through. I think that's good on the mayonnaise for now. I'm gonna test the salt and pepper in this. Just get a piece of potato. Good. I'm tasting potatoes. I'm tasting a little vinegar. It definitely needs a little more salt. It definitely needs just a little more mayonnaise. Finish mixing it up. It's not making that sound. It's not good. Let me give it another little taste. I think we're good there. We're gonna leave it alone. It's on the money. Time to plate it up. It's simple. It's potato salad. It's a side. It's not gonna be too fancy. Get yourself a nice heaping mound of potato salad. Get it in there. Don't be shy. I'm gonna stud it with a couple of olives. And then I like to just take slices of the egg and kind of just put that around. A little bit of that yolk crumbling. And there you have it everyone. That is my potato salad. Let's give it a taste. Get a nice piece of potato in there. Make sure you get it nice and dressed. Potatoes are perfectly cooked. They have a little bit of bite to them. Crumbly on the outside. The olives have a nice salty pop. It's creamy. It's eggy. Every time I try it, I'm that little boy back on Long Island. My grandmother's serving this up. And that's part of why this is so wonderful. It's a great potato salad, but then I get to think about my grandma.