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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Sides for your BBQ. Homemade Potato Salad

Every good BBQ meal needs to have good side dishes.  Sure, we can live on meat alone, but why do so when there are so many good side dishes.  Plus, you may need a little something else to cut some of the fattiness of your meaty meal.  Today, lets dive into one of my favorite BBQ sides, potato salad.

Mine is fashioned after my Mothers recipe.  It is pretty spot on, up until the moment I add plain yellow mustard.  My Mom makes a traditional Southern white potato salad.  I like the tang that the mustard brings to the table.  A good Southerner will tell you adding mustard is blasphemy.  I call it culinary license.

For this batch, I took one and a half pounds of small, red potatoes, rinsed well and placed into my dutch oven with enough water to cover and one tablespoon of salt.


I brought my potatoes to a boil, then reduced the heat and simmered while covered for 20 minutes, or until fork tender.  When cooked, I drained, rinsed with cold water, cut into quarters with the skin on, and placed in a bowl.  My Grandfather said that leaving the skins on was being lazy.  He might be right, but I like the texture the skins bring to the final product.  I'll leave that decision up to you.


To my potatoes, I add the following:

1/4 of a red onion, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
1/3 cup of sweet relish.  Alternatively, you could dice up 1/3 of a cup of sweet pickles or bread and butter chips and add an additional 1/4 of the juice from the jar.
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and diced
1/2-1 cup of mayonnaise.  I use Helmann's Light Mayo.  A half cup worked well for the 1.5 pounds of   potatoes.  Just start with 1/2 cup and add more until you get the creaminess that you desire.  Remember, you can always add, but you can't subtract.
One healthy squirt of plain yellow mustard.  Nothing scientific here.  I would say I added about 3 tbsp  worth of mustard.


Mix well, place in the refrigerator to chill, then serve.


Quick, easy, and tasty.  Substitute the potato with four cups of cooked elbow macaroni and you have my Macaroni Salad recipe as well.  Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by,

Bill

2 comments:

  1. Potato salad is comfort food to the max. I agree with your Grandfather. Ms. Goofy always want dill pickles. I want bacon. We all have our favorites. Were off to another contest in a couple of minutes.

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    1. Chilebrown, I never thought of potato salad as comfort food. But, now that I have thought about it, I can buy I to the concept.

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