How To Make an Old-Fashioned Hot German Potato Salad

In this video, I'm going to show you how you can make an old-fashioned German warm potato salad. And I'm going to teach you a little tiny trick that makes that salad stand out and be your new favorite. Before I'm going to show you how to make this delicious German potato salad, I want to talk to you a little bit about one of my pet peeves. It's probably a little strong. If you're not interested to hear what I have to say, you can skip forward to this and get right to the recipe. So I was born in Stuttgart, which is the southern western part of Germany. It's kind of like where the Black Forest area is. And it's pretty much the same, let's say, like close to Bavaria. I'm trying to teach you the map and it's not really working. Anyhow, Bavaria and Munich. And I lived there for about 10 years and then I moved to more than northern Germany. And so all the potato salads that I remember really eating were mayonnaise-based potato salads. And I have a video, which I'm linking here, that did really well because I'm teaching you exactly how to make a mayonnaise-based potato salad. I also have the recipe on my blog and I get a lot of comments, people telling me that this is not an authentic German recipe. Now, I grew up in Germany. I'm as German as they come. And I can tell you that a mayonnaise-based potato salad is a traditional, authentic German potato salad. However, having said that, there are regional differences and there are personal preferences. And I even went as far as to see what I could find online. And here is an article from Die Zeit online, which is a newspaper in Germany. And they're talking about that when it comes to potato salad, the preferences are very different. So the oil and vinegar-based potato salad served warm is more of a southern German tradition versus northern German. And I will link this article below if you are interested and if you speak German. Or you can even run it through a translation app and you can read this article. So now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'm going to teach you how to make a traditional old-fashioned oil and vinegar-based warm potato salad, just like you might find it in a Bavarian beer garden. Then I'd love to know from you in the comments which potato salad you prefer or if you like them both or what your thoughts are on this whole potato salad issue. Boiling the potatoes the right way and using the right potatoes is always critical for any potato salad. I like to use some waxy potatoes like Yukon Gold or something that I can find. You definitely don't want starchy like russet potatoes. And I like to just barely cover them with water. I have this favorite pot of mine here that I use and I shake around so that the potatoes are evenly covered by water. And I set them over the stove and I start with medium high heat. And here the water is boiling, which I don't want. And I'm going to turn the heat to low because I really barely want to simmer them. We Germans call that leise kochen. You really just want it hot and just a few bubbles up to the surface. And this is my favorite pot. It doesn't have a handle on the lid, but hey, what can you do? Here I have some, for full disclosure, vegan bacon because we were making this for friends and they're vegetarians. So usually I use regular pork bacon and I fry that up and put that in a shallow bowl with some paper towels to soak up any excess fat. Checking up on my potatoes, I want to make sure they're just barely done, not super soft, but just barely done. When they're done, I like to drain them over the sink. You can also keep the lid on there with potholders to keep the potatoes in and drain the water out. Now I'm going to peel the potatoes and it's always easier to peel potatoes when they're hot. I love using this potato pick or prick. I'm going to leave a link in the description box for you where you can find it. It's a very useful little piece of kitchen equipment that I love and I have been using forever. You can hold a hot potato and peel it. And it's like I said, it's easier to peel the potatoes when they're hot than when they're cold, which is what I always like to do. Then I'm going to go through all of the potatoes here. And over here I have an onion. If you have ever been to Germany or made recipes in Germany, you would probably know that onions tend to be a little smaller in Germany. So when a recipe says one onion, it's pretty much always half of an onion of an American onion because they tend to be really big. I also like to keep the potato, I'm sorry, the onion peel to make bone broth because it really adds to the flavor. And so that's why I'm going to keep it on neatly stacked away here. Then I'm slicing my onion and cutting it in small dice. I personally like the onion to not be super crunchy in there and stand out. And but again, that's a little bit personal preference. If you like to have bigger chunks of onion and feel that when you're biting on a spoonful or forkful of potato salad, then you can obviously cut the dice a little bit bigger. Then I'm going to transfer them to this bowl over here. And I'm going to marinate them a little bit because I feel like that takes the pungent onion a little bit away. So I'm adding first, I'm adding my oil, a couple of tablespoons. And next, I'm going to add my white wine vinegar and soaking or marinating the onions in the vinegar definitely helps mellow them out. And that's why I'm going to do that first and just simply add the vinegar and then give that a good stir. If you do like the onion taste, you can omit that step or just add the whole dressing in one go. Giving that a quick stir just to make sure that everything is covered up and evenly coated by the vinegar and the oil. In the meantime, I'm going to slice the potatoes right into the onion mixture here. I want to make sure that my slices are pretty even, about half an inch or so. And if you really like your potato salad warm, what you can also do is set your bowl into another bigger bowl with hot water to keep everything warm. But then you would have to serve it pretty immediately right after you're done. And if you're going to make this ahead of time, it's going to be a little bit more challenging to keep the potato salad warm. We also love a lot of herbs. Here is some chives I found in my garden and I'm going to chop that really fine. I like the specks of green and the very gentle onion flavor and taste of the chives. Over there in that small measuring bowl, I have some broth and the broth really is what makes this recipe stand out and gives it a nice deep flavor without adding extra salt to it. And I'm going to add the herbs right to my about four ounces of broth. And then I have some dill. Germans love dill. There's a lot of recipes that use dill, for example, cucumber salad. But even in a potato salad, the dill is really one of the three spices that I actually like adding because they add so much freshness and extra color and flavor to the final dish. I'm going to also add that to the broth. And next, I have some parsley. What's a good German recipe without parsley? And also from the garden, first, I like to pick the leaves off of the stems and keep the stems out. And then I have my nifty mezzaluna. We call that Wiegemesser in German. This one is heirloom from my grandparents. It's pretty big and hefty. Most of the ones that you find these days are a little smaller, but I love this one. And it just cuts the Italian parsley in really small pieces. I like to use my knife to run it along the blades and get all the herbs off of the blades because they will stick to the stainless steel blades here. And also this goes right into my broth. And that also locks in all the nutrients of the herbs instead of letting those dissipate. A little bit of sugar, you might be surprised. We don't want to make this taste sweet, but definitely have a bit of a rounder taste to it. And then some salt. Potatoes are typically very thirsty for salt. And I definitely encourage you to go ahead and adjust the salt to your liking and make sure that it is not too salty, but just salty enough for your taste. Giving this a quick stir and then I'm going to pour this right over the warm potatoes. Give this a good mix and you'll see that some of the potatoes are kind of stuck together, the potato slices. So what I want to do here is break them apart so that the dressing can evenly coat all the potato slices over there. I have my yes, vegan, but it's just the same bacon. If you don't like the bacon at all, if you don't have it, you can definitely leave it out. Some people like the potato salad without bacon. I think it adds to the color and adds just another layer of salty, crunchy something to it. So I definitely prefer adding this bacon. I hope you enjoyed this. Leave me a comment below if you have any questions. Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.