Best ever potato salad

16 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
16 mediums Small Potatoes
¾ cup Mayonaise
1½ teaspoon Yellow Mustard
12 Eggs, hard boiled.
1 cup Apple cider vinegar
1½ tablespoon Pickle relish
¾ tablespoon Dry parsley flakes
Pinch of Celery Salt
½ medium White onion, diced
4 Celery stalks, split

Directions

Gather ingredients. The half cup of sprinkling vinegar should be just estimated from the bottle as you sprinkle. It's just a conservative guestimate and the exact amount will depend upon the amount of potatoes to sprinkle. Don't worry about it too much. Boil potatoes whole. If your potato size varies much, put in the larger ones first. A medium sized potato will take ABOUT 25 minutes total. A smaller one maybe 18 minutes.

One of the keys here is to boil the potatoes till cooked but still a little firm. If they are cooked till soft, then the subsequent stirring will render the salad mushy. You don't want them crunchy, but just cooked and still firm. That's the first secret! Peel the potatoes when they are still warm. The warmer the better. Peeling them AFTER they are cooked seems to make a difference in taste. They MUST not cool entirely or the vinegar will not be absorbed properly. I peel them almost straight out of the pot when still darn hot. That's the second secret! Cut them into irregular chunks, little wedges about an inch or slightly less on a side with the greatest thickness about a half inch. Just cut a little off one end, then cut another small chunk off, then keep cutting pieces off in random sizes of varying shapes, mostly you end up with very irregular pyramidal shapes....You want pieces big enough to not turn into mush but small enough for ...your liking! The edges will eventually break off and mush up onto the salad while the larger parts of the bodies will remain whole. You are cutting, peeling and dropping them into a large bowl. There really should be two people doing this or one should work as quickly as possible. After you have cut up a potato or two, sprinkle them fairly generously vinegar and stir around a bit in the bowl..just a bit so you get the vinegar that fell to the bottom of the bowl on the potatoes. As you finish a potato or two, sprinkle each (they should be warm to hot when you sprinkle, if possible...THAT's the BIG secret to this recipe) fairly generously. I put my finger over the end of the bottle of cider vinegar and drizzly drip it onto the potatoes making sure each is sprinkled well. If you run out of the half cup, just use more. Each potato gets a fairly generous sprinkling of vinegar. THAT point is more important than the measurement of the ½ cup of vinegar above. Note: I don't measure out a half cup and then pour it on them. That would be awkward. I did measure this once out so I could have a recipe for a friend and I learned I sprinkled ABOUT a half a cup. Salt them at this point; I don't know how much....Just salt them like you like. The vinegar needs a comment. The importance of a generous sprinkling of vinegar while the potatoes are warm/hot can't be over emphasized. They will soak up the vinegar. I am always amazed at how much vinegar it takes and how when they are done, the vinegar is tasted, but the dish is not 'vinegary' like a hot German potato salad which I hate....trust in a good sprinkling of vinegar at this point and if in doubt, sprinkle a little more! Stir in the other ingredients, leaving the eggs to last. Chop up the eggs, slicing, cutting in whatever size/shape you wish but we are not talking about whole or half eggs here. Cut them up. The yolks will fall apart when sliced up and that's ok. Stir all the eggs into the rest of the mix. The yolks will incorporate into the salad and you don't have to worry about them; don't stir forever or worry about being gentle or anything. Just mix it up. Add the other ½ cup of vinegar. If you are a real chicken, you may wish to add only a ¼ cup but it will probably take it all (and maybe even a bit more eventually). Take a taste. Add some more salt if needed. It will be good but not perfect at this point. Taste it again. Note the vinegar flavor peeking through. It may even be fairly vinegary (that's a word, right?).

Cover and put in a fridge over night. That's the last big secret. Taste again after sitting in the fridge overnight. Notice that the vinegar flavor is much softer. Add some more vinegar and let that absorb for an hour or two. You may well have used much more than the 1 cup total by this point.

Salt to taste if needed. You can serve this without the over-night setting but it will truly be a noticeably better salad the next day. You will want to adjust the amount of mayo to suit your taste. I like a pretty mayoee salad. Probably even a bit more than this calls for. Some don't. You may want more or less celery. My wife doesn't like any (egads!) None of these amounts need be exact, but they are close enough for a good starting point.

The key is to use more vinegar than you could have imagined, sprinkling well while the potatoes are hot and firm but not crunchy. The rest is all to taste. I've never served this to a group that didn't ohh and ahh over it. It is a bit of an effort but if you take the time you will have some of the best potato salad ever.

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