If Your Store-Bought Potato Salad Tastes Too Much Like Vinegar, Here's The Fix

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Potato salad is a side dish staple that's made with just a few basic ingredients. Cooked potatoes, a little mayonnaise, and a hint of vinegar are all you need, though there are plenty of ingredients to upgrade your recipe. But if you grab some potato salad at the store and find it's too heavy on the vinegar, you can balance it with a number of different things, from lemon zest to some extra mayonnaise and even a little sugar.

Lemon zest does not have the same flavor as lemon juice. It's brighter, sweeter, and far less acidic, and when that bright, aromatic flavor combines with vinegar, it mellows vinegar's highly-acidic taste. To zest a lemon properly, you'll need a zester like a Microplane. Gently grate only the bright yellow part of the lemon rind (the white part is bitter and won't do your potato salad any favors). If the zest gets stuck in the grater, remove it with a fork. Mix a bit of the zest into the potato salad, taste it, then add more as needed.

If you don't own a zester, you can try grating the lemon with a cheese grater, or you can resort to other ingredients. Acid needs a rich counterpart, which is part of the reason why mayonnaise and vinegar pair so well in potato salad. To cut that acidity, consider adding a little more mayonnaise, then pairing it with some additional salt. Both have strong flavors that will help reduce the overpowering vinegar taste.

Pretty much any high-fat ingredient will work to balance the vinegar. If you want to add a new flavor profile, incorporate sun dried tomato oil or Calabrian chili oil. In both cases, the oil will cut the acid — a balance that's popular in homemade salad dressing — and the strong flavor of each will bring something new to the dish. Sweet flavors also offer balance. A little sugar or a drizzle of honey would both tame the vinegar in the potato salad in the same way that vinegar would tame an overly sweet sauce. Start with a small amount, then add more as needed to make sure the potato salad doesn't turn too sweet.