Make Potato Salad In Half The Time With One Easy Canned Swap

Though it's the perfect cool, savory side for a hamburger or hot dog fresh off the grill, old-fashioned potato salad is undeniably a bit labor intensive. Not to mention the way that boiling potatoes heats up your kitchen, especially since potato salad is often served at warm weather gatherings. If you're craving potato salad but want to avoid the hassle of making it from scratch, canned potatoes are about to become your new best friend.

There are lots of reasons canned potatoes should always be in your pantry. Fast, easy, no-heat-necessary potato salad is one of them. Since they're already peeled and fully cooked, you can skip those time consuming steps for a potato salad that comes together in minutes, especially if you opt for sliced canned potatoes instead of whole. That way, you don't even need to cut them; just rinse, pat dry, and stir together with your dressing, other veggies, and season your potato salad with tangy Old Bay or other robust seasonings (canned potatoes can have a tinny undertone that may need to be masked). Of course, if you prefer cubed spuds in your salad, whole canned potatoes let you choose the size of your cubes.

Other than seasoning, the most important step in making canned potato salad taste as good as (or even better than) fresh is rinsing the potatoes. The canning liquid is high in sodium and other preservatives to prevent the potatoes from spoiling, so it doesn't taste very good. Rinsing helps remove some of the extra sodium from the potatoes, and may even remove the aforementioned tinny flavor if you're lucky. Just don't rinse them too long or they start to dissolve. About 30 seconds under cool water should work, along with thorough drying to keep your dressing from becoming soupy.

In terms of seasoning, a classic mayonnaise-based dressing works just as well with canned potatoes as fresh, but amp up the flavor with a squeeze of Dijon mustard, some lightly crushed celery seed, or red pepper flakes. Briny ingredients are also delicious with canned potatoes. A splash of pickle juice or olive brine, along with several teaspoons of minced pickles or olives, brings these spuds to life and helps the rest of the flavors pop. You can also quite literally freshen up this salad with ingredients such as minced celery, red onion, or even thinly sliced sugar snap peas or shaved fennel. You might even cube up a tart green apple, which not only provides plenty of juicy flavor, but also a crisp contrast to the softer potatoes.