Potato Salad

 

Ron's Potato Salad

This morning I made another batch of potato salad. 

I thrive on this potato salad. 

Funny thing though, growing up I didn't like potato salad. 

There was a lot of food I didn't like growing up that I like now. It isn't because my tastes have changed, it is because I didn't like the way my Mother prepared certain dishes. 

Growing up in the Forties and Fifties, I assumed that's the way potato salad, stuffed cabbage, spaghetti and many other foods tasted, bland at best offensive at worst. 

My Father fished and hunted a lot. I hate fish. I hate any seafood except maybe tuna salad and that has to be white albacore tuna. 

I don't like squirrel or rabbit. Both often had remnants of buckshot in the flesh. You haven't lived until your teeth unexpectedly crunch down on buckshot. Lovely, just lovely. 

My father especially liked squirrel stew with dumplings, squirrel skull included. Seriously, he liked to suck the squirrel brains out through the squirrel's empty eye sockets. 

Fish, all those tiny little bones in trout. Flounder was a little better.

Now my Mom's potato salad; she made it very dry with onions and green peppers. I like onions and green peppers but not in potato salad. 

Green string beans. I hated them when growing up. I just assumed all string beans were cooked to almost mush like consistency. And "Pop" especially like sour string beans. Imagine my delight in discovering green string beans eaten al dente.  Crisp and flavorful, having only been gently steamed a minute or two. My brother Isaac still likes the mush string beans, he can't understand why his son Isaac III likes lightly steamed string beans like I do. I tell him "Ike, I can now taste the flavor of the string bean." He still doesn't get it but then he a MAGA guy. Their tastes are different (to say the least). I never liked Kook-Aid either.

Let's talk spaghetti. My Mother didn't like garlic. I never tasted garlic until I was in the Army. I actually had spaghetti that tasted good. When Mom made spaghetti she would cook the spaghetti and then put it in a bowl dry and put a big spoonful of bland garlic less spaghetti sauce on top then mix it all in. Both my brothers liked this bastardized version of spaghetti so much they would have the leftovers the next day for breakfast by frying the spaghetti in one of Mom's well worn cast iron skillets. YUM!

Perhaps the one fish exception was my Mom's salmon patty cakes. She made the best patty cakes which I've never been able to duplicate. It was always a treat when she made us kids salmon patty cakes, which we didn't have often because canned salmon was too expensive to buy often.

If Mom was alive today I doubt she would like my potato salad. My recipe (and it is my personalized recipe) is more like potato/egg salad.

For one thing I don't boil the unpeeled potatoes first then cool them off and peel them. I find preparing the potatoes that way cooks them unevenly. The outside is overdone, almost like mush and the insides are almost uncooked. Oh I know, "Slower boil", but I don't have the patience for that method. Instead I peel and cut the raw potatoes ahead of time and then put them in lightly salted water and bring them to a slow boil, watching that the pot doesn't boil over. I only boil them abut five to seven minutes, or until the peeled and cut potatoes are tender which I check frequently with a fork. Be careful not to let the potatoes cook too long or else you'll have mashed potatoes.

After I determine the potatoes are tender I drain them in a colander and put the colander on a plate and outside on my back deck to cool down. In the meantime I have been boiling four large eggs.

One the potatoes have cooled down dump them in a big bowl and mix in one diced celery stalk. Also mix in either celery seed or caraway seed to your preference taste. Lately I've been using caraway seed. I used to put a tablespoon of vinegar but I stopped doing that because the potato salad tends to separate and get watery when storing in the refrigerator more than three days. When I make a big batch of potato salad like this I make it to last a week. I have a couple of dollops of this delicious and unique potato salad with both my lunch and dinner. 

Now for the main ingredient of my potato salad, mayonnaise. I don't hold back on the mayo. I use Kraft's mayonnaise. Oh I know everyone and their sister says Hellman's is the ONLY mayo to use but I beg to differ. I find Kraft's the ONLY mayo to use. And for God's sake, DON'T USE MIRACLE WHIP.

I don't know what that is but it sure ain't mayo.

Now I use a lot of mayonnaise, at least a half a jar, sometimes more. I mix the mayo in with a spatula then I add the hard boiled eggs. Depending on the consistency of the potato salad I may add more mayo. I also add chopped fresh parsley. Not dried but fresh parsley. I nurse parsley plants outside during the winter but this winter I ran out early so I made my potato salad without the parsley. It tasted just as good. 

Oh, one more very important ingredient I almost forgot it mustard. Definitely add mustard. I use French's mustard. You can use Heinz also when the store you shop is out of French's, a situation I found myself in this past winter. Don't use any of the fancy mustard, just the plain old yellow mustard. Now I do go heavy on the mustard but not too heavy. Maybe use two tablespoons to my half a jar of mayo. Every batch of potato salad has a different consistency. I think it is the starch in the type of potatoes you use. I used Idaho baking potatoes. Again, do everything to your taste. 

This potato salad is good at room temperature but I think best cold after at least four hours in the refrigerator.