Saturday, August 16, 2014 – So one of my mother’s most popular recipes is her secret potato salad recipe. (I call it a secret recipe, but if you’ve ever eaten it, you’ll realize it’s not so secret.) So I figure I’d prolly learn it and keep the family recipe going.
And in the spirit of secret recipes, I’m going to share it with you.
Ingredients
2 eggs
2 small russet potatoes
2 large carrots
1 apple (Honeycrisp or Fuji or Gala)
mayonnaise
raisins
Instructions
Hard-boil and peel eggs. Peel and cook potatoes and carrots. Peel apples. Chop everything into ~1/4 inch dice.
Mix the eggs, potatoes, carrots, and apple together, with just enough mayo to achieve the desired consistency. Garnish with raisins.
Serves 16.
In case you can’t tell, that’s a lot of potato salad. Which makes sense, given that there are usually ~16 people at the potlucks my mother goes to. You’d prolly want to halve that recipe. Which might involve chopping a quarter of an apple and eating the rest. Depending on what kind of texture you want, you might even want to up it to half an apple.
Speaking of apples, originally, the only apple I’d ever used extensively was the granny smith apple. So I decided to use granny smith apples in my first attempt at this recipe. Except granny smiths are way too tart and have kind of a crispy texture. So I asked my mother (and polled all my friends), and we’ve collectively decided that Honeycrisps, Fujis, or Galas are the best to use. (Maybe I should go buy one of each apple and eat them all to get an idea of how apples taste. Mmm… apples…)
Also note that I didn’t tell you how to cook your veggies. My mom steams them in the rice cooker. I prefer boiling them. You want the carrots to cook until they’re soft and tender. The potatoes, on the other hand, want to be firm but fully cooked.
This one’s a popular dish back with my parents’ social group in California, and I’m glad I can share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. (Also, it’s a lot of chopping, so I hope you enjoy chopping stuff.)
Update Friday, September 5, 2014 – After making another batch, I’ve decided that a whole apple works better in the recipe. (I used a gala apple this time. Because they’re much cheaper than Fuji apples, and Uwajimaya doesn’t carry Honeycrisps right now.)
Bonus pic: Close-up of steamed broccoli. What does this have to do with potato salad? Nothing, really. I only included it here because I was doing a “veggie cooking day” and decided to steam some broccoli while I was chopping everything.
