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My niece asked me for the 'real' recipe for my mom's potato salad
She found a version online but said it didn't taste right, which made me realize I'd never written down the part about soaking the onions in vinegar for 15 minutes first. Does anyone else have a small step that gets left out when a recipe gets passed around?
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logantaylor3mo ago
Forget the onions, what about the potatoes? Do you cool them completely before you mix everything or do you add the dressing while they're still a little warm? That's the secret in my house and nobody ever writes it down.
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lindareed3mo ago
Oh man, @logantaylor, that's the real potato salad debate right there. My grandma always swore by adding her vinegar dressing while the potatoes were hot, said they soaked it up better. But then you get that kind of gummy texture sometimes, idk. Maybe it's just me but I let them cool a bit now, like just warm, not hot. Seems like a good middle ground.
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caseyclark21d ago
The real trick nobody talks about is salting the potatoes while they're still steaming. Not the dressing, just a pinch of salt right after you drain them. It changes the whole thing from the inside out. I started doing it after reading some old cookbook from the 50s and it made more difference than anything else I tried. You still get the texture right because the salt doesn't gum things up like vinegar does. Makes the potatoes taste more like themselves before you even add anything else.
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