One Canned Ingredient Turns Classic Potato Salad Into A Seafood Boil-Style Side Dish

It can be easy to forget just how versatile potato salad really is. Not only are there potato salad preparations from all over the world, but there are also versions for almost any occasion, and practically every mood. For a potato salad that evokes the fun, festive seafood boils that you'll find at fetes everywhere from New Orleans to the Carolinas and all the way up the East Coast, a few ounces of canned crab can go a long way.

A successful seafood boil includes all manner of items, but you can usually count on potatoes amid the titular swimmers. But between all of the potential ingredients (like corn and andouille sausage), their preparation, precise layering, and carefully calibrated cook times, the dish can also get a little complicated, delicious as it is. So, mingling some of a seafood boil's components in a lower-lift dish like potato salad is a great way to capture an inspired, compact taste of the often sprawling communal meal. And it only needs to be marginally more involved than a twirl of the can opener to turn out terrifically.

Expect to eschew several of your go-to potato salad practices in order to create the best foundation for a seafood boil-style crab twist on the dish. If your proprietary recipe piles on the pickles, pours in a mighty portion of apple cider vinegar, or packs a bacon fat secret, for example, hold it this time to properly accommodate the shellfish and other seafood-boil-adjacent accompaniments. Begin, instead, with a more basic potato salad base of the cooked and cooled spuds, mayo, salt, pepper, and some diced celery for crunch. You could also whip up a simple herbed potato salad.

You also want to be intentional about your canned crab selection. Something labeled merely "white crab meat" will likely have a fine, shredded consistency that may add the faint taste of the sea, but will also virtually disappear in your potato salad. Choose lump crab meat instead for a more substantial bite that better asserts itself in the whole mix. Around one 6-ounce can of lump crab per pound of potatoes is a nice ratio. This is also the time to reconsider your usual seasonings. Paprika performs nicely, but Old Bay, which gives any potato salad a maritime twist, makes even more sense here. Finish with lemon to taste for a spritz that might just remind you of the coastal breeze.