Amy’s World Famous Potato Salad

Join Amy as she makes her World Famous Potato Salad. This recipe is delicious and is Amy’s variation of classic down home potato salad. Amy has been making potato salad for years. This recipe has gone through many different variations and is now one of Amy’s favorites. Enjoy! Please share!

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hi and welcome to Amy learns to cook on the show today we’re gonna make my favorite potato salad now this potato salad sort of grew over the course of time because I changed it out a lot and I got to the point where I don’t even have to measure anything and that’s what’s great about this potato salad because you can vary it based on your taste on that particular day so join me as we make my favorite potato salad you okay so obviously the first thing we have to start out with is our potatoes and let me tell you there’s a lot of controversy about what type of potato to use how to cook it all that fun stuff my answer to that is I do all of the above sometimes I use russets sometimes I use red waxy potatoes it really just depends on the type and style of potato salad that I want to make today we’re using russets just because you know this is just how I want to make it today tomorrow I could use red ones the difference between the two is red ones will stay together better because they’re really waxy russet potatoes will have a tendency to fall apart particularly if you overcook them or you mush them when you are stirring or chopping them so this is what I do okay so what I’ve done is I’ve already boiled the potatoes and I’ve chopped them into little cubes how I boiled these is I always peel them some people don’t like to peel them because I think they absorb too much water my thing is I don’t know how many times that I cut peel potatoes and they have black spots under the skin then I can’t see so I always peel them that’s just a matter of preference if you don’t want to peel them make sure you thoroughly scrub them and inspect them for any bad areas or black spots to me I just peel them because I know that I can get rid of that and cut any of that off so what I do is I peel them I throw them into cold water and I let it come up to a boil with them in their cold starting with cold you don’t want to start them with hot water because they’ll tend to cook unevenly if you start them with cold water it’ll bring the temperature up of the potatoes and the waters all equally and your potatoes will cook more evenly I cook them till I can put a fork in them but you don’t want to overcook them because they will be mushy or you basically will be making mashed potatoes and the key for me is to have potatoes that are really chunky and so after they cook I take the potatoes I let them cool in a bowl and I take him to the frigerator and I cool them totally completely and then I cut them this way the russets will hold up a little bit better if you don’t cut them until they’re cold you also don’t want to mix your potato salad with hot potatoes because you’re using mayonnaise and you don’t want to risk having warm potato salad back into the frigerator some people like to put their dressing on when the potatoes are still warm they think that it absorbs the dressing a little bit more I’m you know a germaphobe so I do everything according to what is completely food safe and so I completely cool my potatoes down I chop them into little squares like this and just be careful not to crush these squares because otherwise we’re going to end up with big it won’t be potato salad it’ll just be mashed potatoes and some people like that but I prefer them to be in chunks so now we’re going to cut up our ingredients and make our potato salad okay so what’s great about this potato salad is you can put anything you want in here and I usually do it I just judge based on how the potato salad looks the very first thing I put in here is pickles and I really love the zesty spears this is what I use I don’t use pickle relish I buy these they have a little bit of seasoning in here and they make for a great potato salad whoo you know a little juicy right so I like everything in my potato salad to be have big chunks so what I do is I take these whole pickles and I just slice them down the middle and then I cut them into chunks like this this way we have nice good chunks in our potato salad right and then these go straight into your potatoes now we don’t want to stir any of this until we get everything in here and we stir at the end because if we do stir it we just run the risk of breaking those potatoes up so we want to leave these potatoes as whole as we can get them in there little chunks so we’re not gonna stir until everything is in here right so we’re gonna go ahead and you can put as much pickle in here is you like if you don’t want any pickle don’t put any pickle or if you like pickles to be smaller chunks cut them a little smaller right what’s great about potato salad is I was talking to Eric earlier today and potato salad is like an empty canvas right potatoes taste like potatoes and how we make our potato salad you’re an artist right and your potato salad is whatever you want it to be so we’re gonna go ahead and finish cutting these I kind of want this might be my last pickle in here I want to cut my fingers looks pretty good already I like pickles in there right okay next up is some olives so I just have a can of black olives here and whoops that’s the one that got away right and you can buy olives already chopped I just buy them like this because I buy them at my local club store and they don’t come sliced at my local club store it comes in like a pack of six cans of olives so I have to do my own shopping right which I don’t mind sort of therapeutic all of this is not I don’t think is like a traditional ingredient in potato salad at least maybe not southern style I just happen to like them in there you can use any kind of olive if you like olives if you don’t then leave them out right that’s what’s great about this potato salad it’s whatever you want it to be all right okay next up is some red onion and I love red onion in potato salad it’s just the classic right to me at least some people like other kinds of onion I just happen to like red onion I think it gives it a good color and it’s like the potato salad flavor that’s just how it is right so we’re going to go ahead and chop up our onion sort of a medium dice my dicing is never perfect right and this is a big huge onion the red ones for some reason usually are pretty big so we’re gonna judge this and we might put a little on the side and come back to it so what I usually do to gauge the onion is I put some in here and as we’re stirring I put a little more if that’s what I decide to do so I’m gonna chop the rest of this onion up and put it in a little Bowl so that we will have a little extra for if we decide that we want more so now it’s time to make the dressing and I start with my favorite mayonnaise right and some people have asked me how much do I make of this dressing my answer is make some and if you need some more make some more I really don’t know exactly how much you’re going to need because it really depends on how many potatoes you have and how much these potatoes soak up the dressing so we’re going to make some dressing we’re gonna stir it a little bit and we’re gonna see if we need some more and then we’ll make some more right so it depends I had I think about eight potatoes but my potatoes were really small so you know if you buy your potatoes at your local club store they’re gonna be these big monster potatoes so you’re gonna need more dressing I might need a little bit more than that I don’t want it like swimming and dressing right so we’re going to take some regular ole yellow mustard and we’re going to go ahead and give it a squeeze and what I want to see is just a light yellow color so depending on how much mayonnaise you put in here will dictate how much mustard you need right and that looks really nice it’s a light mustard color so we’re going to put our dressing on and so we have our potato salad here and we’re going to go ahead and add our dressing it looks really good and it smells really good right now I’m gonna put in something to give it a little bit of Tang Eric’s mom used to always put pickle relish and hers and it does have that little vinegary tang so I get that by just adding a little bit of our pickle juice out of the jar not a lot because you don’t want to make it soggy we’re just going to put a little bit and that’s just going to give us a little bit of Tang right so we’re going to go ahead and stir this we want to stir this really gently because we don’t want to break up our potatoes wow it looks really yummy I love it with the olives we’re gonna put a little crushed black pepper in here you probably won’t need to put any salt because the the mayonnaise is pretty salty so I’m just gonna take a quick taste that’s why I can adjust for seasoning so we’re gonna put this in a serving bowl and we’re gonna let Eric take a taste so Amy called me in here after hours of salivating or Minister salivating so I can sample this see if it’s any good right so I’m the official independent taste tester of the show so we’ll just put some on there I know she can keep the floor and I want that right so it’s definitely creamy the potatoes are firm we got the all is we got the dill pickles and stuff the onions aren’t bad at all so she’s got them really distributed really good the Tang and stuff is good it’s it’s just a little bit of a balance there so um I give this a you know obviously my little two thumbs of approval here I’ve been making this for probably twenty years or so however however long we’ve been together nineteen close enough so I don’t know I think it’s good so hopefully you’ll give us a try and you’ll like it and as always if you like our recipes you know please subscribe below give us a comment and a like of course and we also have website ami learn to cook calm and we’re on Pinterest and Twitter at ami learns to cook Eric got a little jealous on that one cuz he loves olives he got the snarl but that a to said manners