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Best Ever Potato Salad

Category: Salads

Author: The Savvybearcat

Date: 1/1/2007

Rating:

(3.0) by 1 users

Ingredients:

16 medium Small Potatoes
3/4 cup Mayonaise
1 1/2 tsp Yellow Mustard
12 Eggs, hard boiled.
1 cup Apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp Pickle relish
3/4 tbsp Dry parsley flakes
Pinch of Celery Salt
1/2 medium White onion, diced
4 Celery stalks, split

Instructions:

Gather ingredients. The half cup of sprinkling vinegar should be just
estimated from the bottle as you sprinkle. It's just a conservative
guestimate and the exact amount will depend upon the amount of
potatoes to sprinkle. Don't worry about it too much. Boil potatoes
whole. If your potato size varies much, put in the larger ones first.
A medium sized potato will take ABOUT 25 minutes total. A smaller one
maybe 18 minutes. One of the keys here is to boil the potatoes till
cooked but still a little firm. If they are cooked till soft, then
the subsequent stirring will render the salad mushy. You don't want
them crunchy, but just cooked and still firm. That's the first
secret! Peel the potatoes when they are still warm. The warmer the
better. Peeling them AFTER they are cooked seems to make a difference
in taste. They MUST not cool entirely or the vinegar will not be
absorbed properly. I peel them almost straight out of the pot when
still darn hot. That's the second secret! Cut them into irregular
chunks, little wedges about an inch or slightly less on a side with
the greatest thickness about a half inch. Just cut a little off one
end, then cut another small chunk off, then keep cutting pieces off
in random sizes of varying shapes, mostly you end up with very
irregular pyramidal shapes....You want pieces big enough to not turn
into mush but small enough for ...your liking! The edges will
eventually break off and mush up onto the salad while the larger
parts of the bodies will remain whole. You are cutting, peeling and
dropping them into a large bowl. There really should be two people
doing this or one should work as quickly as possible. After you have
cut up a potato or two, sprinkle them fairly generously vinegar and
stir around a bit in the bowl..just a bit so you get the vinegar that
fell to the bottom of the bowl on the potatoes. As you finish a
potato or two, sprinkle each (they should be warm to hot when you
sprinkle, if possible...THAT's the BIG secret to this recipe) fairly
generously. I put my finger over the end of the bottle of cider
vinegar and drizzly drip it onto the potatoes making sure each is
sprinkled well. If you run out of the half cup, just use more. Each
potato gets a fairly generous sprinkling of vinegar. THAT point is
more important than the measurement of the 1/2 cup of vinegar above.
Note: I don't measure out a half cup and then pour it on them. That
would be awkward. I did measure this once out so I could have a
recipe for a friend and I learned I sprinkled ABOUT a half a cup.
Salt them at this point; I don't know how much....Just salt them like
you like. The vinegar needs a comment. The importance of a generous
sprinkling of vinegar while the potatoes are warm/hot can't be over
emphasized. They will soak up the vinegar. I am always amazed at how
much vinegar it takes and how when they are done, the vinegar is
tasted, but the dish is not 'vinegary' like a hot German potato salad
which I hate....trust in a good sprinkling of vinegar at this point
and if in doubt, sprinkle a little more! Stir in the other
ingredients, leaving the eggs to last. Chop up the eggs, slicing,
cutting in whatever size/shape you wish but we are not talking about
whole or half eggs here. Cut them up. The yolks will fall apart when
sliced up and that's ok. Stir all the eggs into the rest of the mix.
The yolks will incorporate into the salad and you don't have to worry
about them; don't stir forever or worry about being gentle or
anything. Just mix it up. Add the other 1/2 cup of vinegar. If you
are a real chicken, you may wish to add only a 1/4 cup but it will
probably take it all (and maybe even a bit more eventually). Take a
taste. Add some more salt if needed. It will be good but not perfect
at this point. Taste it again. Note the vinegar flavor peeking
through. It may even be fairly vinegary (that's a word, right?).
Cover and put in a fridge over night. That's the last big secret.
Taste again after sitting in the fridge overnight. Notice that the
vinegar flavor is much softer. Add some more vinegar and let that
absorb for an hour or two. You may well have used much more than the
1 cup total by this point. Salt to taste if needed. You can serve
this without the over-night setting but it will truly be a noticeably
better salad the next day. You will want to adjust the amount of mayo
to suit your taste. I like a pretty mayoee salad. Probably even a bit
more than this calls for. Some don't. You may want more or less
celery. My wife doesn't like any (egads!) None of these amounts need
be exact, but they are close enough for a good starting point. The
key is to use more vinegar than you could have imagined, sprinkling
well while the potatoes are hot and firm but not crunchy. The rest is
all to taste. I've never served this to a group that didn't ohh and
ahh over it. It is a bit of an effort but if you take the time you
will have some of the best potato salad ever.