The Fourth of July demands two things: Potato salad and red, white and blue everything. Well. The Fourth of July also demands fireworks. And ice cream sandwiches. And grilled meats. And something for the vegetarians. The Fourth of July is actually a really demanding brat, isn’t it? You never hear Flag Day getting all mouthy like that.
Potato Things: Just for the sake of hushing up the Fourth of July’s fresh mouth, the potato things used in this salad are red, white and blue baby confetti taters. 28 ounces of ‘em. (That’s 1¾ pounds.) Cut up into quarters (“quartered”), boiled for ten or so minutes in salted water until they’re fork tender, then drained.
Salad Things: Salad is delicious and so we’ll be emphasizing the salad part of the experience by stirring green onion (2), radish (3), celery (3 stalks) and yellow pepper (1 small) in with our tubers. But you could change around the salad things if you wanted. Those four offer a nice range of colors and flavors, which is why they’re in my salad, but you may decide you prefer your food more on the monochromatic side and stick with entirely green things.
Regardless, it’s important to think for a moment about the inclusion of crunchy, flavorful items in potato salad: a thing to remember is that you need to take differing palates into consideration. You should absolutely include these things! But you should include them in a specific and versatile way.
Which, roughly translated, means this: you have to appease the celery deniers. [Ed. note – Celery is an impediment to human happiness.] And the radish deniers. And the onion deniers. Basically, humor the folks who hate taste-ed foodstuffs. The way to do that is to provide a variety of those things cut into manageable pieces.
Thus, the people who love the bite of a good vegetable with their potatoes are satisfied.
Those who like more potato and less crunch can serve themselves accordingly.
And those of you who hate vegetables/taste/joy can pick all the tiny pieces of offending matter off to the corner of their plate without making too much of a scene about it. (But stop doing that. A little radish won’t kill you.) The trick, in terms of respecting the inexplicable demands of these freak outliers, is to not cut the veggies so small that they sneak up on unsuspecting vegetable avoiders. Think less confetti and more ticker tape.
Dressing: The biggest thing to know about the dressing is that you should mix it up while the potatoes are draining, then transfer them back to the pot in which you boiled them, and then pour the dressing over them. While they’re hot, that’s the key. Then later, when things have cooled, you can transfer the dressed taters to your large bowl in which the salad portion of things has been waiting patiently.
The other thing you should know is that there’s no mayo in this dressing. Mayo dressings are wonderful! But it’s just not what we’re using in this particular potato salad.
Whisk together:
4T cider vinegar
2T dijon mustard
1T olive oil
½t salt
¼t black pepper
½t mustard seed
1 packet Splenda
Oh gosh, you know? There are a few more things I need to tell you about this dressing: (1) I had mustard seeds so I threw them in because of their good looks but if you don’t have them you can skip that part. (2) If you hate Splenda you can use sugar. The Splenda was just right out there on my counter when I was making this, so. One packet of Splenda equals 2 teaspoons of the real stuff. (3) You can substitute a vinegar or an oil or a mustard you prefer to the ones I used. A lighter vinegar is the ticket here though. Avoid the stickier, more syrupy type vinegars. I’m looking at you, Balsamic.
Once your salad is together, cover it up with some plastic or tin wrap and refrigerate it for, oh…an hour at least? Then taste it. Does it need something else? Put that something else in. Then serve it.
Tags: celery, Flag Day knows when to keep its mouth shut, food, jolie kerr, jolie tell us how to live, jolie what is in your salad, patriotism, salads, taters what’s taters, vinegar
Yes! Okay yes, Jolie I would LOVE to come to your america day party! God I fucking love potato salad. What can I bring?
I have a lot of lemon curd. If you pick me up on the way we can make lemon charlotte served with blueberries and strawberries.
*beep beep*
BRD, gotta get the hound sequestered.
bring her along please!
I don’t have any kitchen at the moment so cannot make beautiful potato salad or a flag cake. Jolie, can I come too? I’ll won’t even pick the disgusting celery out of the potato salad!
Just bring yourself! And some eye of newt. I appear to be fresh out.
I love potato salad. My mom has an excellent recipe that is all yellow and white and the mustard makes these dark yellow dots. So delicious, but I’m thinking patriotic potatoes are the way to go. A big bowl of this and a side of berry flag cake.
mmmm potato salad! if it were me I would also put in some kind of pickled item! for example, may I direct your attention to… pickled celery?! http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/02/egg-salad-…
(p.s. love the tags!)
Jolie WILL show us how to live
Future salads will have pickled things. Don’t you worry. (Pickled celery is so freaking good oh my God.)
Celery IS an impediment to human happiness, unless its in the form of dainty stalks on a plate with blue cheese & chicken wings. GET OUT OF MY SALADS , TINY CELERY CHUNKS.
CELERY IS NATURE’S BREADSTICK. Get out of here with your celery denial, you pinko commie.
Carrots are nature’s breadsticks!
Ugh, carrots. Feh.
what on earth … BREADSTICKS are nature’s breadsticks!!
there is no substitute
I can’t even eat gluten and I agree! BREADSTICKS ARE NATURE’S BREADSTICKS. You heard it from breadheadedand. Wait. Bread-headed? Oh my god. A SHILL for the bread industry! Folks, already this website is attracting paid commenters. Disgusting. But yet, a tribute to Mallory and Nicole’s talents?
BreadheadedandCRAZY!
…
… …
dun dun dun!
*falls over*
(my comment was obviously in jest ANYWAY, but people’s sekrit identities need to be a little less sekrit for me being a little slow on the uptake, haha.)
it wouldn’t fit! :'(
oh I’ll shill for Big Yeast any day! Hotly anticipating that first paycheque boys.
eta: I meant to say Big Wheat but I guess either could work. and maybe Big Yeast is a little more applicable across multiple facets of my life. but one wonders how big the yeast industry really is. god, I’m the worst paid commenter ever, I don’t know ANYTHING.
You’ll figure it out!
Speaking of figuring things out, to lengthen your name per reply above, did you try the ID –> Edit Profile –> Profile and then the blank there? Not sure how long it’s allowed to be but it allowed fondue with cheddar to change up!
!!! THANKS FRIEND!
YAY YAY YAY
really mallory? really? your site is called The Toast, celebrating the best thing in the universe a sad little human can put in their body and you dare compare death sticks (carrots) to the selfsame stuff toast is made of? for shame. (note: everything is about me and i’m deathly allergic to both carrots And celery). but i love toast. breadstick toast is the best. as long as it doesn’t have caraway on it. caraway is the worst. happy july 4th!
Carrots are good, dude! Not the slimy garbage little shaved things that come in bags, obviously, but the multi-colored ones that cost like a dollar at produce markets and taste amazing when you roast em. UP WITH CARROTS
Why are you trying to kill me with your expensive roots?!
I roast em with honey mesquite and pickle em with chipotle peppers and vinegar and it’s a wonderful life
Proof that celery is nature’s breadstick: they are both awesome with peanut butter on them.
It even forms a convenient scoop shape! Because obviously the point is to fit as much hummus in your mouth as is humanly possible in one movement.
this site IS pro-hummus right??
If it isn’t, I’m out of here.
I normally shy away from potato salad, but this sounds fantastic. No mayo!
Yes, potato salad without mayo sounds delicious! I love potatoes! And celery.
Jolie! This looks delicious.
Joliiiiiiiie tell us how to live always.
What is this “salad” you speak of?? My family knows only of bacon. 16 pounds of hickory smoked bacon. A hallucinatory odyssey through dark and fragrant tunnels of bacon
According to McDonald’s, large quantities of bacon are necessary for a good salad. I discovered this when after telling the girl at the counter that I don’t eat pork or meat (she asked!), I ordered a chicken ranch salad and discovered an entire sublettuce layer of bacon. YES I’M STILL BITTER.
As soon as I wrote that, a McDonald’s ad came on Spotify. Conspiracy!
I want to go to there.
Surprisingly enough, our 4th dinner was made by our big-city Richmond cousin and it was a Mediterannean meal – smoked salmon, grape leaves and hummus and olives and fruit salad. But for lunch? All the BLTs you could ever hope to eat.
Now if you’ll excuse me, the pulled hog just arrived
This looks delicious. Could I make like a 2 people serving?
Oh for sure! This actually doesn’t make an ENORMOUS batch — maybe 4 generous servings? — but you could certainly cut it in half pretty easily. But also, since it doesn’t have mayo it will keep for a decent stretch of time.
Take out those weird blue ones and add some red peppers and it’s perfect for Canada Day! (J/k, blue potatoes are amazing, and also I want so much potato salad now).
Jolie!
Also, this looks amazing.
Just bring yourself! And some eye of newt. I appear to be fresh out.
AAAAAAAAAA!!!!! EEEEE!!!
Jolie Kerr! I love your writing style! I’ll read whatever you want to scribble about, ok?
Call yourself an American and you took out the cholesterol-raising, fattening, BEST part of the potato salad? Give me whole-egg mayonnaise or give me death!
*eats Duke’s from the jar with a spoon to make up for this outrage*
Surprisingly enough, our 4th dinner was made by our big-city Richmond cousin and it was a Mediterannean meal – smoked salmon, grape leaves and hummus and olives and fruit salad. But for lunch? All the BLTs you could ever hope to eat.
Now if you'll excuse me, the pulled hog just arrived
This looks amazing, but…Splenda? I know you say that you can use sugar, but the mere mention of Splenda desecrating such a beautiful creation is making me second-guess making it at all. Help…
This looks amazing, but…Splenda? I know you say that you can use sugar, but the mere mention of Splenda desecrating such a beautiful creation is making me second-guess making it at all. Help…
I endorse all things potato and especially all things colored-potato, but seriously, if you’re Splenda-ing your salad, please tell your guests. I am a freak who cannot process Splenda and it gives me oh-my-god-I’m-dying-from-the-inside-out kidney pains and means I can’t use any of the delicious-looking Sodastream syrups and basically I hate everything. Down with Splenda.
(HI! This is what prompted me to fire up my WordPress account! I like it here! You are nice! The salad is pretty! I am an old woman who rants about artificial sweeteners and carries Sweet & Low in my pocketbook!)
I will be making this tasty salad this weekend with some BACON in it, duh. I’m late to the July 4th party, but we can pretend with Bastille Day, n’est-ce pas?
JOLIE I MISS YOU. I am even more excited about salads than I was about cleaning.