Southern Potato Salad

It's cookout season! And I have the perfect Southern potato salad recipe to share with you!

Mama made this recipe a lot growing up - and let me tell you, it has taken YEARS for me to pin down some exact measurements on this one.

Potato salad is one of those magical old-fashioned family recipes that Mama used to always make by memory. I don't know whether it's even written down anywhere. (If it is, I don't have a copy of it!) 

And I have always been able to make a pretty good version of it myself with a pinch of this and a dash of that - until I knew deep down in my soul that it was "right." Some years it would have more eggs; some years it would have more pickles. but it was always the same ingredients and it always generally tasted the same. And the finished product always got rave reviews, so I must have been doing something right!

But I did figure that perhaps one day I would like to pass an actual recipe for potato salad down to the next generation, so I started measuring my pinches and dashes each time I made it. And I tweaked it and tweaked it until I was sure that it was THE ONE. I'm sharing the "recipe" that I measured out for our annual Memorial Day cookout with you guys today (and it tastes exactly like the potato salad that we always had growing up).

If you want a tried and true Southern potato salad that is perfect for cookouts, summer picnics, backyard barbecues, or potlucks, THIS is your recipe. And if you read all the way to the end, I'll even share my own personal tip for making it the easiest and quickest recipe you'll find for potato salad.

Southern Potato Salad

2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 eggs, hard boiled and chopped

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2/3 cup sweet salad cube pickles

1/4 cup yellow mustard

1 cup mayonnaise

3/4 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp salt (plus 1 additional tsp for pot of boiling water)

1/4 tsp pepper

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil. When the water starts to boil add 1 teaspoon of salt and the cubed potatoes. Cook until you can just mash the potatoes with a fork with little resistance (around 7-10 minutes, but check frequently and make sure to not undercook or overcook). 
2. Drain the potatoes in a colander and set aside to cool.
3. Place cooled potatoes in a large mixing bowl along with mayonnaise, mustard, onion, pickles, eggs, remaining salt, pepper, and celery seed and mix well.
4. Refrigerate for four hours or overnight.
5. Serve chilled.

Notes:

True Southerners use Duke's mayonnaise. We don't receive any compensation for saying that - just a friendly heads up. If you marry into a Southern family, nobody is going to tell you this. You are just expected to know that you really shouldn't put Hellmann's in your potato salad and try to pass it off at your Southern family reunion. It could cause some hard feelings - just sayin'.

If you want your potato salad to have a creamier consistency, you can use a potato masher to mash some of the potatoes before mixing in the rest of the ingredients.

The longer you refrigerate the potato salad, the more the flavors meld together and the better it tastes! So making it the night before you plan to serve it is really optimal.

To make the prep work for this salad even quicker, you can use frozen cubed hash browns instead of peeling and dicing potatoes! (I know, I know . . . died-in-the-wool Southerners everywhere are clutching their pearls.) But sometimes you get in a pinch and you're short on time. This can help you out. You can find them in the frozen food section of your grocery store, and they're already diced for you. If using frozen potatoes, you may not need to cook them the full amount of time, so keep an eye on them.

Hope you'll give this old fashioned Southern recipe a try - it will knock your socks off. I promise.