Chef John's Mom's Best Tip for Perfect Potato Salad

There are so many types of potato salad out there made across the world. But sometimes, it’s hard to beat a cookout classic dressed up with mayonnaise, crunchy celery, zippy onion, and perfectly-cooked hard-boiled eggs. That’s exactly what Chef John’s recipe inherited from his mom serves up: an aptly named Perfect Potato Salad. 

In that recipe, Chef John highlights one very important rule in making this potato salad: After cooking whole potatoes, they must come down to room temperature before you combine them with the remaining ingredients and toss them with your dressing. If you dress your potatoes while they’re still hot, the mayo-based dressing will end up looking greasy and unappetizing. 

Waiting for the potatoes to cool has another bonus. For this potato salad, you start by boiling whole, skin-on potatoes as opposed to cut or peeled potatoes. Then you peel and cut the potatoes after they’ve been cooked. Peeling cooked, room-temperature potatoes is much easier than peeling raw potatoes. Because the potato skin peels so easily from the flesh of the potato, you also waste less of the potato. 

That’s not Chef John’s only potato salad tip. Here are his top tips for making a perfect potato salad.

How to Make the Best Potato Salad

1. Use Russet potatoes.
   
   Chef John prefers starchy Russet potatoes that will absorb more salt and seasoning to a more waxy potato. (But don’t worry, if you can’t dream of a potato salad without red potatoes, the recipe will still work just fine.)
   
   
2. Cook your potatoes in heavily salted water. 
   
   Treat your potatoes like pasta and be sure to add plenty of salt to your water when you cook them to ensure they get properly seasoned. When potatoes cook and heat up, their starch molecules open up to absorb water and salt. When the potatoes are removed from the water and stop cooking, the cells close. You generally need one tablespoon of salt for every pound of potatoes. This recipe uses just a touch more. 
   
   
3. Start with cold water when boiling potatoes (and make sure the potatoes are cleaned).
   
   If you drop potatoes into boiling water, the outsides will cook before the inside and you’ll be left with unevenly cooked potatoes. Starting with cool water will help ensure the potatoes cook evenly, inside out. Plus, it’s always good practice to start with clean, washed potatoes free of debris and dirt.
   
   
4. Make your dressing and prep your ingredients while the potatoes cool.
   
   Because you need to wait for your potatoes to cool to room temperature before combining ingredients and dressing your potato salad, wait to prep ingredients and mix the dressing until the potatoes are cooling to optimize your time.
   
   
5. Cut potatoes into slightly larger chunks than you want to have in your finished salad.
   
   Russet potatoes are somewhat delicate after being cooked, which is part of the reason why they work so well in this recipe. Chef John recommends cutting your potato chunks slightly larger than you want in the finished salad because the chunks will continue to break down as you stir in the remaining ingredients and dressing.

What Others Are Saying About Perfect Potato Salad

This potato salad is comfort-food perfection at home, at picnics, cookouts, or straight from the refrigerator with a spoon when no one is watching. Allrecipes user Cathy said, “I have been on the search for cracking the code on how to make the 'perfect' potato salad for most of my life... and I've found it! This recipe is that 'classic' potato salad that is served at picnics, graduation parties, church gatherings whose combination of flavors and creamy-chunky mouth appeal and a taste oh-so-satisfying - is spot on and exactly what you wanted.”

Many folks commented on the flexibility of the recipe, adding additional ingredients to their preference. Allrecipes user Scott Sulo Harper said, “Great recipe as written. My go to potato salad recipe. I’ve experimented with half dijon and have yellow mustard and like someone else I also like to add dill pickles or dill relish.” And the best part? It’ll work with what you have on hand at home. User trommom said, “A classic potato salad recipe that can be tweaked with what you have on hand. Comes out perfect every time no matter how I tweak it!”