The Only Potato Salad I’ll Eat
I’ll always try others, but I never like them.
I made this for a post-Christmas get-together (I wish I had taken a picture; it’s so pretty, all fluffy and white, speckled with green.) and discovered a few things:
- Australian sour cream is not like North American sour cream — it’s less sour and more cream.
- Heinz salad cream is an acceptable substitute for Miracle Whip.
- My mother is incapable of writing a recipe for someone who doesn’t already know how to make it.
I have no idea where this recipe originally came from. The copy that my mother dictated to me says it’s my great-grandmother’s recipe, which, well, Miracle Whip. Possible, but highly unlikely. More likely is that my grandmother changed it.
The recipe as originally written out by my mother:
Mom’s Potato Salad
Boil as many potatoes as needed (new are best) in skins — cool, peel, and slice. 1/4 cup melted butter (browned) removed from heat and carefully pour in 1/4 cup vinegar. 1T sugar — salt and pepper to taste also green onions with tops — chopped. Mix potato mixture pour over butter then mix 1/2 cup or more sour cream and 1/4 Miracle Whip or salad dressing stir into potatoes — chill.
I’m lucky in that I’ve watched her make it a lot over the years. My husband is not so lucky and got tripped up.
The recipe as she dictated it to me over the phone one day:
Mom’s Potato Salad
Small new potatoes as needed (depending on size, one or two per person)
1 bunch chopped green onions
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, browned
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup Miracle Whip
sour cream
Boil potatoes, drain, and cool. Slice thinly (egg slicer)
Add salt, pepper, green onion and sugar. Mix well.
Melt and brown butter. Remove from heat and add vinegar slowly.
Mix with potatoes and add Miracle Whip. Refrigerate.
When ready to serve add sour cream to make it smooth.
I’ve made this one. It didn’t taste quite right.
The reality is somewhere in between:
Mom’s Potato Salad (with changes and amendments brought on by various conditions including that of living in Australia, not Canada)
8 medium new potatoes (smaller potatoes make prettier slices, but these are what I could get)
3 large green onions (spring onions)
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup Miracle Whip (or 1/3 cup Heinz salad cream)
1/4 cup sour cream (plus an extra tablespoon of vinegar)
1 tsp dried dill
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil the potatoes until the skins start to split. Drain and cool. Slip the skins off because they’re annoying to slice. (At this point I looked at the pile of lovely-smelling potato skins and got out some olive oil, salt, and a baking tray. They crisped up nicely under the broiler for a few minutes.) Slice the potatoes (by hand — they only gummed up my mandoline) into pieces about the size or a quarter (or a 20 cent coin) and about a half a centimetre thick.
In a small pot, melt and brown the butter. (I also added the salt, because all I had on hand was large-grain sea salt and I wanted it to dissolve.) Remove it from the heat and add the vinegar and green onions. (Raw onions have too much of a bite for me; heating them just a tiny bit makes them more pleasant.)
Pour the butter mixture into a bowl big enough to toss the whole lot in (I used an old wok — works perfectly). Add the pepper, then the potatoes. Toss them to coat the potatoes. Add sour cream, Miracle Whip, and dill. Toss it all together. Refrigerate.
If you want to use mayonnaise, be my guest — I hate the stuff — but the important part of this is the acid. Miracle Whip has vinegar in it already, as well as paprika and a few other things, so subbing mayonnaise might dull the flavour.
I used less salad cream than Miracle Whip because it’s runnier.
Also, I’ve had good results lightening the heavy, oily Aussie sour cream with plain, non-fat yogurt to make it something more like I’m used to.
Refrigeration as the last step is important — it firms up the potatoes again and improves the flavours and the texture.
