One Extra Prep Step Will Leave Your Potato Salad Packed With Flavor

When there's a backyard barbecue or family gathering, many people enjoy being treated to a unique style of potato salad. Some recipes may be family treasures, while others can be gleaned from cooks with savvy ingredient lists. If you would like to make a memorable potato salad with enhanced flavor for your next get-together, use one easy additional step to make all the difference.

Amp up the flavor of potato salad by blending the still-warm, cooked potatoes with pickle juice or vinegar. When potatoes are warm and softened, their starches readily absorb the salt and vinegar in the pickle brine. The pickle juice adds a spiced and salty vinegar tang to the finished salad, and creates a well-balanced base for the additional dressing. You can use the juice from a jar of pickles you already have sitting on the fridge, or purchase a new jar from our ranked list of best store-bought pickles.

To use this technique, boil a batch of potatoes until tender and then drain them. Place the hot potatoes on a rimmed baking sheet and toss about ¼ cup of the pickle juice on them, then set the tray in the refrigerator to cool, preferably for 30 minutes or more; the potatoes will soak up the tangy, salty vinegar all the way to the inside to create incredible flavor. Then, they're ready for the dressing.

If you're making a recipe for old-fashioned potato salad, you might add traditional ingredients like celery, shallots, mayonnaise, chopped pickles, additional pickle juice, mustard, and salt and pepper, or consider more unique combinations. One way to truly increase the flavor is to actually boil potatoes in pickle juice for an elevated potato salad. Then, once they've cooled, add the mayonnaise. To infuse more fat and tartness, add sour cream to provide a nice tangy complement and brighten the creaminess of the mayo. 

There are additional ways to use this technique, too. One is to employ Martha Stewart's potato salad trick and toss a vinaigrette-based dressing into the heated potatoes and serve them while they're still warm, like a German potato salad. This type of salad doesn't include mayonnaise, as hot potatoes will cause the dressing to separate. Add about ½ cup of white vinegar base to the cooked potatoes, in addition to a blend of salt, sugar, and grated onions. Using vinegar acts similarly to adding pickle juice to the warm potatoes, as the acid penetrates into the porous spuds and flavors them all the way through to the inside. Complete a German potato salad recipe by including bacon and bacon drippings, herbs, and spices. 

Consider experimenting with alternate vinegar types, such as blending apple cider vinegar and red wine vinegar for a well-balanced acidity. You can use vinegar blends with mayo-based salads as well, as long as the potatoes have been cooled. Once you find the perfect flavor combinations, your next potato salad recipe might become one that's handed down to future generations.