Margaret’s mother’s potato salad

IMG_4517Potlucks in the South are so amazing. Everyone brings their A game and you always discover a surprise or two on the table.

Margaret Brown - potato salad queen

Margaret Brown – potato salad queen

Friday, a women’s group I belong to had a potluck lunch and Margaret Brown brought her mother’s potato salad. Margaret is no bigger than a No. 2 pencil and doesn’t cook so I was taken aback by how good her potato salad was. “It was my mother’s recipe,” she told me. “Can I have it?” I asked. “Well, I don’t exactly know the measurements. I just make it until it tastes like my mother’s.”

This is a fundamental problem among people who don’t cook (God bless you, Margaret and King Daddy). Mark’s great-grandmother, Belle, made the most fantastic yeast rolls and heavenly blackberry cobbler. Or so I hear.

He never thought to stand at her side, watch what she did at the stove and write the recipes down. Of course, as a 10-year-old child he did not contemplate marrying me. Otherwise, he could not have found a pen and paper fast enough. Be that as it may, I was not going to let this opportunity pass me by. “Margaret, write down what’s in the potato salad, give me a little sample to take home and I will figure it out,” I told her.

Here’s why this exercise was worth it. Margaret’s mother’s potato salad is singularly delicious for what it does not have in it. No hard-boiled eggs and no sweet pickles with juice, both of which are Southern staples. Her potato salad is clean. It tastes of potatoes and everything else in the recipe is a supporting player and not a distraction. And, Margaret learned a trick from her mother that I’ll pass along to you.  She mixes everything but the mayonnaise and refrigerates it overnight. That way the potatoes set up again and the salad retains its character after the mayonnaise is added. Each dainty bite packs a total punch of flavor.

So I figured it out. I used Yukon Gold potatoes because I didn’t have the red potatoes the recipe calls for, but with every other ingredient I’d add and taste against Margaret’s sample. And then I had King Daddy taste test both of them. He couldn’t tell the difference.

If any of you out there have your mother’s, grandmother’s or Great Aunt Nellie’s unwritten recipe for the greatest thing you ever ate, send it to me. I am on a mission now to preserve those classic dishes. I don’t think Margaret will use this recipe to make her mother’s potato salad because she already knows how it’s supposed to taste. But her grandchildren will.

Margaret's mother's potato salad
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4
 
Ingredients
  • 2 pounds red potatoes
  • ½ cup finely chopped celery
  • 2 tablespoons minced onion
  • 2 teaspoons celery seed
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • ½ cup Hellmann’s mayonnaise with olive oil
Instructions
  1. Put the potatoes in a 2-quart saucepan, cover with water and boil until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes.
  2. Remove the potatoes and cool until they are easy to handle. Peel them and cut them into ½-inch chunks.
  3. Add the celery, onion, celery seed, salt and pepper to the potatoes and mix carefully, trying not to break up the potato chunks.
  4. Refrigerate overnight.
  5. The next day, add the mayonnaise and combine thoroughly.
Notes
Margaret minces the onion in a food processor. She also allows that her mother used homemade mayonnaise, but that just wasn't going to happen with Margaret and Hellmann's mayonnaise with olive oil is the closest thing.
 

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