I never liked cold salads. Didn’t grow up with them. Even though my parents were both raised in Oklahoma, it wasn’t anything my mother made. I’d see them at church potlucks and friends’ backyard barbecues. Potato. Macaroni. Cole slaw. Just a confusing menagerie of soft, sweet mayonnaise. Weird little side dishes from a roadside diner.
There was really nothing appealing about it to me. That was until I met my wife. This is true of quite a few foods, but it gets a little complicated, as she only won me over to the way she does things, not always the entire category.
Most potato salads I see are made with way too much mayonnaise for my taste and are sweet somehow, containing unnecessary additions. If my wife had made potato salad that way, I might not have married her. But she surprised me with a great many dishes that I didn’t think I liked, but now consume happily, if not a little greedily. I learned that oftentimes, I only liked her version of a dish, not the dish itself.
My wife’s name is Jane, but the grandkids call her Uppie, so she’s slowly becoming Uppie in all aspects of her life. We might have to change her driver’s license and passport soon. During lockdown, I launched a website called Uppie’s Kitchen, along with an entire brand that I felt effectively represented her cooking, gardening, and home decorating skills. She did what she always did, and I busied myself with documenting it with short essays and photography. It was a team project.
For most things Uppie makes, I can’t give you a recipe because one does not exist. While some dishes are more straightforward, others are made differently every time, with slight variations depending on what is in season, or on hand. I can usually break down the dishes’ ingredients and give some hints at the ratios needed for a quality finished product, but it’s all a matter of taste anyway.
Uppie is not much of a baker, her decadent blueberry muffins notwithstanding. She’s a cook. Meaning she doesn’t measure much but creates by feel and taste. She might read a half dozen recipes to get some understanding of the dish, and then she goes rogue, making the way she sees fit with ingredients she prefers.
Potato salad is a dish that requires a light touch and a sense of balance. Too much of any one thing and the recipe is knocked out of kilter. Uppie makes two different versions that are roughly the same but with a difference in potato type. Yukon Gold or Red Skinned. The proportions change slightly, but the ingredients remain the same.
Red-Skinned Dill Potato Salad
Red-Skinned Potatoes
Red Onion
Celery
Mayonnaise
Vinegar
Mustard
Dill
Sea Salt
Fresh Pepper
I prefer it a little on the sharp side, so when I make it, I don’t hold back on the vinegar, mustard, or dill. But the amount of mayo is the real key. Not too little or too much, and if pressed just a smidge beyond too little.
There are no acceptable additions or substitutions, which should be self-explanatory, but I’ll provide some examples nevertheless. Miracle Whip is not mayonnaise. I’m not even sure it’s made from anything edible. If you don’t have mayonnaise, you can’t make potato salad. We don’t add ham, bacon, fruits, or nuts. They do not belong. Neither do eggs. If you want eggs, hard boil them and make deviled eggs with a dab of horseradish and some jalapeño relish. You won’t be disappointed. But keep them the hell out of the salad.
There is an urban myth within Black American culture that posits that white people do unnatural things to potato salad. One of the most prevalent narratives is that we add raisins, like sociopaths. I don’t know if this happened once and has been passed along ever since, or if it grew out of a joke, but I don’t know anyone who do such a thing. I reject the very notion that we would do such a thing today. In the 1950s? Probably. White people were just learning to cook for themselves. Anything is possible. But not today.
One variation I love to do, which is only really available through fortuitous serendipity or hard work, is first to grill new red-skinned potatoes, lightly coated with olive oil and rosemary. Go a bit lighter on the Mayo and mustard, so the vinegar comes through. What you get is a savory, slightly crunchy, tangy side that pairs well with chicken, fish, or beef. It’s quite versatile.
Presumably, it has no direct effect on the flavor, but I can’t help but think that the bowl matters. Ours is a large, heavy ceramic bowl we’ve had for years. At one time, we were using one that came from my grandmother, but nothing lasts forever. We now have a new old bowl, that no doubt belonged to someone else’s grandmother. As long as a grandmother once used it, it’s good enough for potato salad.
It has been known to house all manner of things, but I still think of it as the potato salad bowl. Uppie’s potato salad is quite popular, so when she makes it, she doesn’t scrimp. Consequently, the bowl is deep and wide.
When Uppie was a child, her family ate very seasonally, both in terms of practical issues such as avoiding heating up the kitchen in the summer, as well as the availability of fresh produce from local farms and fisheries. There were a lot of fresh vegetables and cold salads, tomato sandwiches, and cucumber salads. Seafood and meats on the grill.
When our kids were small, she had other rules as well, such as no socks from Labor Day to Memorial Day. We lived at the beach, and shoes were largely optional anyway. At most, you wore flip-flops. Because I worked in an office most days, I was the lone exception. The other rule was no showering indoors.
People who don’t live near the ocean are often confused by the existence of the outdoor shower. Even those who regularly visit the beach, and have seen such things, think of outdoor showers as a means to rinse sand and saltwater off, but not as a method to formerly wash your body.
For Uppie, summertime offered many opportunities to do things differently. Laundry hung on the line, not inside the dryer. Showers were taken outdoors. Socks waited for boot weather. Meals, whenever possible, were served cold or cooked outside.
Today is April 1st, an unfortunate day of pranks and lies, but also the proper start of Spring. Our Easter meal has always been a ham, potato salad, fresh asparagus, green beans, baked beans, and biscuits. As an appetizer, the aforementioned deviled eggs are the featured players.
So even though we will do this again in a week, Uppie is making potato salad today. We plan to pair it with barbecue chicken thighs and green beans. It’s a perfect crossover from winter meals to summer. A little sneak peek at the food to come. Soon it will be time for scallops and crabs, pasta, and grilled shrimp.
Chicken thighs are liberally dusted with Adobo spices and left to chill in the refrigerator. They will be grilled to perfection and finished with a hickory barbecue sauce. The potato salad features boiled, not grilled, potatoes, and we are currently out of fresh dill (as it is not in season yet). I, myself, do not care for asparagus, but Uppie loves it. She will steam asparagus, and I’ll have green beans.
It’s raining today, but tomorrow the sun will be bright and the world green, for spring has arrived, and we are ready.
