Roast Your Potato Salad Spuds ASAP For The Perfect Crispy Texture
You're always meant to make potato salad with boiled potatoes, right? Wrong. For a potato salad with an extra dimension of crispy texture, you can also use roasted potatoes. Sure, you may need to adjust your dressing a bit to allow the spuds to stay crispy (more on that in a minute), but it's worth it for the novel approach to this classic.
For a roasted potato salad, you'll want to keep the skins on; they add extra flavor, and it'll save you time. You'll generally want to use a waxy potato variety for this kind of salad. These potatoes don't have as much starch, so they don't break down that easily. Just as importantly, they don't absorb as much moisture, which allows them to be coated in dressing without sucking it all up. Red potatoes are a solid selection for this type of salad, but anything waxy should be workable. You'll want to roast them until they're golden and crisp — a bit crispier than your normal roasted potatoes would be wise — to help them keep some crunch when any dressing is applied. Depending on taste, you could also impart some extra flavor while they're roasting with extras like garlic or rosemary. Naturally, they should be seasoned before they hit the oven.
What to dress it with
Since the goal here is to have crispy potatoes, you probably won't want to use the exact same mayo dressing that you might for a classic boiled potato salad. But that doesn't mean no mayo at all — just a reduced amount if you're going to use it (say, a half cup instead of the full cup or more that might typically recommended).
Since you're shaking up the traditional mayo-centric potato salad here, you can skip the white stuff completely and opt for a vinaigrette-style dressing instead, with a mix of vinegar, mustard, and oil (using high-quality versions of all these would be wise). Whether you're doing mayo or vinaigrette, herbs are essential, too. Potatoes are a great vehicle for flavor, so there's not really any specific combination of herbs that you need here. Fresh, bright flavors like dill, tarragon, basil, or parsley are all excellent choices. Some recipes also throw in some red or green onion for extra flavor. Ultimately, there's no "right" way to make a roasted potato salad, just go easy on the moist ingredients to keep things crisp, and see where your tastebuds lead you.