potato salad recipe – Twice as Tasty

I didn’t become a fan of potato salads until I realized that my homemade ones didn’t have to resemble the typical store-bought version, heavily coated in a mayonnaise-based dressing. If I put a creamy dressing on potato salad, it’s usually one of the variations I shared last week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon. I far prefer the tangy combination of yogurt and sour cream over the cloying richness of mayonnaise when making Potato Salad with Pickles. Likewise, Sweet Potato-Mushroom Salad benefits from the tart-and-sweet flavor Creamy Balsamic Salad Dressing.

The potato salad recipe I share in this week’s column pulls together flavors from some of these recipes but mostly stands out for its ease and speed, which make it a staple of my personal boating meals and my Fine Dining: Front Country workshops. Ready-to-serve artichoke hearts and olives add zing. Carrots travel well, but I often substitute other fresh ingredients I need to use from the cooler: bell pepper, snap beans or peas, asparagus, cucumber, scallions and more. Hard-boiled eggs provide instant protein.
Learn to make Quick Potato Salad

In the early 2000s, I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, for close to a year. I’d been traveling through Europe and northern Africa for much of the year before that and was drawn to the local flavors in each country and region I visited. Russia presented an interesting dichotomy: a love of all things pickled yet little tolerance for anything spicy or powerfully flavored.

The salad and dressing recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon shows how this dichotomy can be a complementary pairing, which is perhaps one reason both tangy and mild flavors were so popular in Russia. In contrast, the blend that many Westerners know as Russian dressing, which often contains chili sauce, horseradish, and other hot or sharp flavors, would have been too much for my Russian friends. They even found my homemade mac and cheese, with its dash of mustard powder, too spicy. But the tangy combination of pickled vegetables and sour cream in this potato salad was just fine.
Learn to make Potato Salad with Pickles and Creamy Dressing