I mentioned my mom’s potato salad recently, and I was delighted that some of you were curious about the recipe.
When I went to my parents’ new home for July Fourth, my mother sent me home with a) a HUGE hunk of ham, b) cookies, and c) – MOST IMPORTANT – a big container of potato salad.
I managed to make the potato salad last for three additional days, by eating it only for breakfast (except for one day, when I also ate it for lunch) (and then there were a few sneaky spoonsful at odd intervals). Drawing it out for so long required MUCH restraint.
When I found the recipe – in my mother’s own handwriting, so: extra precious – I learned with shock that there is MAYONNAISE in this recipe!!!! I do not care for mayonnaise, and this is certainly not a “mayonnaisey” potato salad. It is a mustardy potato salad. But… apparently there is some mayonnaise in it as well.
Note that my mother references the hard boiled eggs (which I abhor) and appeals to my potato salad sensibilities to override my dislike and add them anyway. I have never tried the salad without the hard boiled egg, so I can’t say for sure it’s truly that important. But I will say that, when very finely chopped, the egg sort of disappears into the background.
This recipe is highly flexible. I don’t recall ever having green pepper in it (though that would be a delicious addition). Sometimes there are pimientos, sometimes not. Sometimes there is celery, sometimes not. The key is in the FLAVOR, not so much the ingredients.
One highly critical element of this recipe is the dried mustard. It gives a special zing to the potato salad that you can’t get with jarred mustard alone.
BUT: The magic of this recipe is in the pickles, I think. Or, in the secret ingredient, which is pickle juice (NEVER vinegar, even though the recipe supposedly calls for vinegar), drizzled out in small amounts until the salad tastes as it should. (NOTE: This is not a pickly salad. But the pickles are CRUCIAL.)
Salt is also extremely important, and this recipe may require some salt tinkering. I think different potatoes have different levels of starchiness (even among the Idaho varietal of potato, which is called for in this recipe because of its crumbly texture), and so the salt gets absorbed differently with each batch.
Do make sure that you do MULTIPLE taste tests, to ensure proper salt/pickle level.
Delicious as a side, but also for breakfast.
Your mention of this potato salad at July 4th inspired me to make my own which I don’t have a recipe for but matches SO closely with your mother’s! I will admit I don’t own or use dry mustard powder, but should get some. I ran out of dill pickles, but used some bread and butter ones and added dried dill which works in a pinch. I also didn’t have any lemon, but a bit of lemon zest is *chef’s kiss* in a potato salad and I also fry up just a bit of bacon.
Yes to lots of salt. Yes to lots of tinkering with vinegar/pickle juice/mustard etc.
I also find potato salad tastes better after at least a day in the fridge.
You would also shudder to know I used 4 hard boiled eggs in my tiny batch, but I love eggs!
Ha – I am not surprised that you have so many eggs in your potato salad! I’m glad your bread and butter pickles worked — I admit to a bit of pickle snobbery and have only ever found a couple of brands of pickles I can stand. They must be whole pickles and VERY CRUNCHY.
Okay, this is so funny because I made a potato salad on Sunday and it was… okay… and I was thinking “I wish Suzanne had given us the recipe for her mom’s potato salad!” So you can imagine my excitement! Just reading this recipe, I can tell it’s going to be amazing. The recipe I made calls for chopped up extra firm tofu in place of the egg, and I’ll do that again, and I’ll use vegan mayo- but otherwise I’ll make the recipe as it’s written (wait- I might also leave out the green pepper.) My son and I have a road trip coming up soon and I’ll make this to go along. Thank you for posting it! I’ll report back.
Oh yay!! I hope it’s a hit for you, Jenny!
My distaste for pickles made me wrinkle my nose. I trust you, Suzanne, that this is the best potato salad recipe for you, but I feel like I must tell you that it just sounds like pickle-flavored potatoes and that is not appealing to me.
My own mom’s potato salad is mayo and hard-boiled egg heavy (and sort of bland – if you tell my mom I typed this, I WILL DENY IT), so I’ve sort of tweaked hers and now make a delicious potato salad in which the key element is BLUEBERRIES. BLUEBERRIES. Who knew? It’s good, but I bet it wouldn’t pass your muster.
BLUEBERIES, Engie?!?! I don’t know how to feel about that.
And while I respect your pickle dictate, I hasten to assure you that it does NOT taste of pickles. It is a mustardy potato-y flavor. The pickle juice just adds… SOMETHING. But I don’t think that it is in any way pickle-y. Pickle containing, yes. Pickle-heavy, no.
The pickle juice supplies the acid that you need! So you could use vinegar (sorry Suzanne, I know you said that is not true) and that is also what the mustard helps with…but I would eat either of your salads! Or your mom’s… I like them all (although definitely the salt has to be on point).
I would love to try some of this! You would hate mine since I use lots of hard boiled eggs, radishes, purple onion and a mix of 1/2 mayo, 1/2 Miracle whip and however much yellow mustard it takes to make the right color mixture. I don’t measure anything.
I so admire people who can cook without measuring! It seems like magic! (Although how do you create the same thing twice? I guess that is part of the magic.)
I love potato salad and that looks great. One thing I learned years ago was to roast potatoes for a salad rather than boil them, but I think the effectiveness of that probably is related to the type of dressing.
OOH. I love the idea of roasting them…
Ooooh interesting! I could see how that would be delicious! Maybe not in this specific recipe, but maybe with a more oil/vinegar based dressing?
Cut them and THEN roast them. Oops.
This does not appear to have as much mustard as my mom’s potato salad, which I prefer. And I love a good potato salad recipe. Especially a recipe for potato salad written in Mom’s handwriting. ❤️
The handwriting does make it special, doesn’t it?!
Yes. Years ago, I believe it was my sister-in-law who gave me a wooden cutting board with a recipe written by my grandmother on it. I’ll take pictures of it and post it on my blog. It is in my office. It’s lovely.
That sounds like such a wonderful keepsake!
It definitely is. ❤️
There’s a special Mom’s Potato Salad on my husband’s side of the family that’s very much loved. I would never think to put a hardboiled egg into potato salad but logically I absolutely agree that for a recipe like this it makes a difference. There’s some magic about egg-pickles-mustard-that little shot of mayo that you didnt’ know about that makes it all work!
It is a magical combination, that’s for sure!
That looks very similar to my mom’s recipe; including the pickle juice. I’d never stopped to think about it – but the idea of pickles and potatoes just sounds wrong; but it’s not! I vote that you frame that recipe and hang it in the kitchen in your new home; as that is, most certainly, a cherished heirloom.
This recipe looks delicious. I happen to like pickles, and mayo, and mustard and eggs and salt, so if it tastes like any of those things I would like it. I also like the German style potato salad, which does not have mayo but does have a heavier pickle flavor. It is delicioso! I will try your mom’s recipe the next time I make potato salad though!
I’m not much of a creamy potato salad girl, but I recently made a dill pickle pasta salad for a giant cottage group and holy crap it is good. I love the recipe in your mom’s handwriting. Omg, just typing this I suddenly remembered working in a group home as a teenager and we were making potato salad, and I was cleaning up behind my co-worker and dumped out the pickle juice to clean the jar while saying “what’s in the dressing besides mayonnaise”. And she said “…..pickle juice, usually”… Eep!
Back in the late eighties/early nineties Beth and I lived in a group house and one of our housemates put pickle juice in everything. We all knew not to throw out a jar when the pickles were gone so Scott could have it.
The salad sounds good. Probably won’t try it, though, because starches like potatoes and rice are actually worse for me than sweets in terms of blood sugar spikes.
This sounds absolutely delicious! I like my potato salad to have a good balance of mayo and mustard (weighted slightly heavier towards mustard) and am 100% a fan of pickle juice in general. It’s the secret ingredient in my deviled egg filling! But I haven’t found the perfect potato salad recipe yet. My favourite to date is the prepared mustard potato salad from Aldi 😉 I’ll have to try this one!
Also, I love that you have the recipe in your mom’s handwriting (and her admonishment about the necessity of hardboiled eggs made me chuckle!).
Thank you so much for sharing this; I will try Mom’s Potato Salad in the near future! What a sweet thing for her to make extra for you to enjoy later and to personally write the recipe for you.
How is it with your parents living in the vicinity now? Are you loving it?
Potato salad is one of my favorite things to eat, especially my mom’s. She makes a delicious one handed down by my grandma. I do know that eggs play a bigger role in hers than in your mom’s. It’s also mustard-heavy but I love it like that! I love when she sends me home with potato salad – love eating it for dayyyys.
Thank you so much for the recipe! It will be tried! My mom’s potato salad is also made with pickles and pickle juice, but she replaced the mayo with greek yogurt somewhere along the way and I don’t taste a difference!
OK, THIS seems like a potato salad I can get behind, except I would likely use baby potatoes and roast them, instead. Unlike Engie (blueberries? in *potato salad*???) I love pickles and pickle juice. Thanks to your mom for sharing. Family recipes are so special.