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| No Mayo Potato Salad |
What’s both the most loved and most feared summer side dish? Homemade potato salad. When you think about it, there’s just so much riding on getting that perfect balance between potato size, overall texture, tanginess, saltiness and that little something extra to make a potato salad the perfect accompaniment to grilled meats, green salads and the other dishes we eat in masse during the warmest months of the year. Most potato salad recipes use mayonnaise, sour cream or crème fraîche as a base for the dressing part of potato salad. All the while, other recipes utilize a dairy free option, normally a salad vinaigrette or oil/acid combo instead.
While there are many quite good to excellent recipes out there on both sides of the dairy based potato salad and vinaigrette based potato salad sides of the potato salad equation, I tend to stick with vinaigrette based potato salad recipes. This way, I get to indulge my tongue in the actual texture of the potato itself and throw a party for my taste buds at the same time since the flavors in the vinaigrette can be altered to my liking. Also, with non-dairy potato salads, one has less to worry about in terms of spoilage during summer’s temperature increases.
For this recipe, I normally use new potatoes only, as they are in fact just that, potatoes which have recently been farmed and thus, they taste fresher. The skins on new potatoes are usually very thin, so that means no peeling them prior to boiling. Also, I tend to use smaller sized potatoes to begin with as this makes cutting them, or even better, breaking them apart in your hands after they have boiled and cooled, much easier!
Yes, you heard that right- choosing thin skinned and smaller potatoes to begin with, then breaking them apart in your hands into the mixing bowl means no more skinning and cutting potatoes! Your potato salad prayers have been answered!
- Salad Dressing
- 45 ml (3 tablespoons) orange juice, freshly squeezed
- 60 ml (¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
- Other Ingredients
- 2 kilos (ca. 4 lbs.) new potatoes (smaller in size is best, but medium and larger size is okay too)
- 500 grams (ca. 1 lb.) cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 150 grams (5.2 oz.) black olives (optional – but worth it!)
- 15 grams chives (1/2 oz.), chopped fine
- salt and black pepper to taste
- Combine all the salad dressing ingredients into a bowl and blend until well combined. You may also add all the ingredients to a blender and mix until creamy. Set aside.
- Place the potatoes in a large pot with just enough cold water to cover them. Add salt to the water and bring the pot to a boil. Boil the potatoes 25-30 minutes, or until they yield easily when pricked with a fork. Do not overcook the potatoes.
- When the potatoes have cooked thoroughly, drain them from the water and set aside to cool. You want them to be cool enough to touch but not completely cold as warm potatoes soak up the dressing better.
- Chop the potatoes into smaller chunks (skins and all) and add them to a mixing bowl. Or even better, simply break them apart (skins and all), into a mixing bowl.
- Next, add the tomatoes, olives and chives to the mixing bowl. Drizzle the dressing over the top of the potato mixture, and then give it a few stirs in order to incorporate the dressing over all of the potatoes. Drizzling the dressing over the top of the potatoes helps even out the distribution of the dressing better than simply pouring it on all at once.
- Season to taste with salt and black pepper.
- Serve and enjoy!
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| Breaking apart the potatoes (sorry for the bad lighting but someone asked for a photo of this technique and this was the best of the bunch) |
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| The Final Product – No Mayo Potato Salad |
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