Skip The Mustard: Add This Powerhouse Ingredient To Potato Salad Instead

Just like your baked, mashed, and hashed varieties, potato salad can be a canvas for all kinds of flavors that enhance the otherwise subtle spud. A bit of the mustard you see in our old-fashioned potato salad has long reigned supreme for a little extra zip, but the roasted garlic you might be more used to pairing with other potato preparations also works wonderfully in the cold, chopped category.

It's no secret that plain potatoes are bland. That's part of what makes them so great with garlic in many of its forms. Roasting garlic not only brings out its rich warmth and savory sweetness, it also softens the interior cloves to a yielding texture that spreads easily throughout the potato salad you already know and love. Adding roasted garlic to your next potato salad also only takes a few seconds of active work. After you slice off the top and drizzle it with olive oil, you can pop it in the oven while you boil your potatoes, and incorporate it all later. It's a low-lift and near-zero commitment for what's a notable upgrade to this staple side dish.

As noted, you can more or less make whatever potato salad you're used to, and simply mix the roasted garlic in once it's cooled. But, if your existing potato salad fave has any strongly flavored ingredients, or the unlikely item that's incompatible with garlic, omit those in lieu of the allium. If your favorite potato salad is abundant with bright, briny olives, for example, eliminate (or just reduce) them to let the garlic take the starring role without having to compete. Happily, this easy garlic upgrade is otherwise an elegant addition to all manner of varying potato salad takes from all over the world. It's just as lovely with the bacon in German potato salad as it is with the dill dotting Scandinavian potato salad. It's a versatile adaptation.

The most common way to roast a head of garlic is to lob off the top, drizzle with olive oil, season with a little salt and pepper, loosely wrap in a square of aluminum foil, and bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. This is considerably longer than potatoes take to boil, but between all the cooling, chopping, and dressing, the timing lines up pretty closely. Let your garlic's temp come down too, lest it melt your salad's mayo. Once it's comfortable to touch, the buttery cloves should slide out nicely with a little pressure when squeezed from the bottom. They should be a near-paste texture, but you can still run a sharp knife through them a few times to create smaller pieces for an even more thorough distribution. You can also roast garlic in the air fryer even faster.