A plate of creamy potato salad.

The Explosively Flavorful Ingredients Your Potato Salad Needs

NEWS

By LYLA PORTER

A plate of creamy potato salad with bacon bits.

Bacon

Cook up a few bacon strips, chop them into pieces, and crumble them into your potato salad to add a whole new dimension of flavor. You can use bacon fat, too.
Bacon strips cooking in a pan.
After cooking the bacon, drain off some fat. Stir in vinegar, sugar, and scrape up bacon bits before adding potatoes, chopped bacon, and parsley for a tangy, salty, and sweet dish.
Open jars of yellow mustard with mustard seeds around.

Mustard

While a spoonful of yellow mustard will lend the brightest color and a sharp zing to your potato salad, adding Dijon mustard will lend a slightly more sophisticated flavor.
An open jar of Dijon mustard with mustard seeds around.
Incorporate grainy mustard to add a little texture to the salad. You can also cook with mustard seeds — especially black mustard seeds — themselves for a pop of flavor.
A plate of potato salad with green beans.

Vinegar

Because of its acidity, you can use vinegar to cut the creamy, fatty flavor profile of certain dishes. Vinegar-based potato salads are lighter and fresher tasting.
Bottle of red wine vinegar next to grapes.
Opt for a vinaigrette made with champagne or red wine vinegar for a French-style potato salad. You can add chopped green beans or stick with fresh herbs and green onion or shallot.
Cupped hands full of fresh herbs.

Fresh Herbs

Finely chop fresh herbs such as parsley, chives, or dill into your potato salad for added freshness and flavor. Thyme and basil are also excellent options.
A small pesto jar on a wooden table.
Make sure to start with less and taste and add more as you cook. If you want to make something extra herbaceous, you could consider flavoring your potato salad with pesto.
A bowl of potato salad with hardboiled egg.

Eggs

Russian salad, also known as Olivier salad, is a potato salad variation that includes carrots and pickles and often incorporates eggs, peas, and sometimes even meat.
The addition of hard-boiled eggs will add protein to your salad while also lending a nice pale yellow color from the yolks. You can dice the egg up finely or leave larger slices.