The Common Mistake Ruining Your Potato Salad's Texture

Potato salad often looks so simple sitting on a picnic table on a lovely day, but it actually takes a fair amount of time, precision, and even space to make it look this easy. Our old-fashioned potato salad recipe, for example, calls for 3 pounds of chopped Yukon Gold potatoes. Boiling such a big batch requires that time, precision, and space right off the bat. So you want to get it right to begin with to avoid sinking all of that effort. And starting your potatoes in a big pot of cold water is just the right first step to avoid any texture mishaps later on.

Just like how starting scrambled eggs in a cold pan provides better temperature control, starting your potato salad spuds in cold water also helps to promote more even cooking. Potatoes are dense, and even when they've already been cut, it takes a little while to properly heat their interiors. Their surface area, however, will obviously begin cooking as soon as it hits boiling water. So, if you start your potatoes in boiling water, you will very likely end up with a textural disaster: overcooked, mushy outsides and undercooked-to-raw, unpalatably firm insides. Were you to continue on with these improperly boiled taters, each bite of your potato salad would be more confusing than the last. Starting the potatoes in cold water helps everything come up to temperature all at once, instead, for a consistent forkful every time.

Much like you would do with your pasta water, you should also salt the water that you plan to boil your potatoes in. Even just a tablespoon will do. Add it while the water's cold to give everything more time to coalesce. The potatoes will soak in some of that salinated H2O as they cook, which will infuse them with more flavor than simply salting once they're out of the pot.

You should also check your boiling potatoes for doneness early and often. Various recipes will call for boil times anywhere from 10 to a whopping 20 minutes. That's eons in potato time. Start testing your potatoes for tenderness a minute or two before the minimum suggested cook time. Our own herbed potato salad recipe, for example, only calls for 12 chopped red potatoes, so they'll cook quicker than our 3-pound Yukon Gold preparation. Once a fork pierces clean through a few separate pieces absent resistance, they're ready to remove before your second potato-making shift — cooling, dressing, and further seasoning — can begin. Your finished salad's starring veggie should end up wonderfully yielding, regardless of what further ingredients follow.