Get my Cookbooks! Easy Potato Salad
This EASY Potato Salad recipe is made using a few traditional ingredients including a combination of mayo and mustard, relish, potatoes, eggs, celery, and onions. Garnish with dill, paprika, green onions, and even bacon.
Be sure to try my Tuna Salad, Egg Salad, and Italian Pasta Salad recipes next!
Easy Potato Salad
Potato salad is such a classic recipe. It’s super simple to make and while there are just a few ingredients, they all complement each other and serve a great purpose.
I absolutely love the combination of using mayo and mustard. Adding hard-boiled eggs make it even more fun to eat than just straight potatoes, and I’ll tell you how to make the most perfect eggs every time.
The onions and celery add a nice crunch, the relish adds a hint of tang, as does the white vinegar which also enhances the flavor of the potatoes and slows down discoloration.
Let do this! I’ll show you how it’s made, what potatoes are the best for this recipe, how to store it, and more.
How to Make it
See recipe card below this post for ingredient quantities and full instructions.
- Gently boil whole/unpeeled Yukon Gold Potatoes until they can be easily pierced with a fork, 20-25 minutes.
- Drain and dice into bite-sized pieces. Toss with white vinegar and let cool.
- Combine with mayo, yellow mustard, relish, garlic salt, onions, and celery.
- Add in diced hard boiled eggs and mix gently. Season with salt/pepper if desired.
- Transfer to a clean serving bowl garnish with dill, paprika, and green onions.
Best Potatoes for Potato Salad
- Waxy potatoes such as red potatoes or Yukon golds hold their shape best after boiling and have a creamier consistency.
Pro Tips
- Leave the skin on the Potatoes: This helps prevent the potatoes from getting mushy. The potato skins are also easy to peel off after they’ve been boiled.
- Use potatoes of roughly the same size: This allows them to cook at the same rate. If you’re unable to get your hands on same-sized potatoes, remove the smaller ones from the heat sooner and allow the larger ones to continue cooking.
- Start with cool water in the pot then bring it to a boil. It helps for more even cooking.
- Add white vinegar to the potatoes while they’re still warm: This will enhance the flavor and slow down discoloration.
- Add the Mayo mixture once the potatoes have cooled: This will prevent the potatoes from getting oily.
- Cooked/Crumbled bacon makes a great garnish as well.
How to Hard Boil Eggs:
- Submerge the eggs in water so they’re covered by 2 inches.
- Gradually bring them to a boil.
- Once the boil is reached, cover the pot and turn off the heat.
- Let them sit for 12 minutes.
- Place them in a colander and rinse them under cool running water to stop the cooking process. Then peel and dice.
How Much Potato Salad Per Person
- 1/2 pounds of potatoes per person is a good rule of thumb when making potato salad.
Storage
- Leftover potato salad that is refrigerated shortly after eating it can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days.
- According to Idaho Potato, if the potato salad has been left out at temperatures over 41° for longer than 2 hours, it should be discarded.
Can you Freeze Potato Salad?
- The creamy mayo base used for potato salad doesn’t freeze well, and neither do hard boiled eggs or celery.
- If you find yourself with an overabundance of potatoes, you can freeze cooked potatoes to use for future potato salads, twice baked potato casserole, or hash brown casserole.
Tools For This Recipe
(Amazon affiliate links)- Check out all of my kitchen essentials here.
- Glass Serving Bowl – I love this one.
- Silver Serving Spoon
- Large Pot– This is the perfect size for boiling the potatoes.
- Chef’s Knife– This one is great and is affordable. I use it all the time.
- Silicone Spatula– Makes it easy to gently mix and coat the potatoes without breaking them.
Try These Next
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- Tuna Melts
-
- Tuna Pasta Salad
-
- Egg Salad
-
- Thai Chicken Salad
-
- Italian Pasta Salad
-
- Mango Salsa
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Easy Potato Salad
This EASY Potato Salad recipe is made using a few traditional ingredients including a combination of mayo and mustard, relish, potatoes, eggs, celery, and onions.
Ingredients
Potato Salad:
- 8 medium Yukon gold potatoes, about 3.75 lbs. total
- 2 Tablespoons distilled white vinegar
- 5 hard-boiled eggs, see notes
- Salt/pepper, to taste
Potato Salad Dressing:
- ¼ cup yellow onion, finely diced
- 2 celery sticks, diced
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- 2 Tablespoons yellow mustard
- 1.5 Tablespoons sweet relish
- ½ teaspoon garlic salt
To garnish:
- ½ teaspoon dried dill weed
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 3 green onions, diced
Instructions
- Fill a large pot with cool water, enough to cover the potatoes by 2 inches. Clean the potatoes, leave the skin on. Add them to the pot, and stir in a teaspoon of salt.
- Bring the water to a gentle boil and cook until fork tender, 20-25 minutes.
- While the water boils, combine the onions, celery, mayo, mustard, relish, and garlic salt in a small bowl. Set aside in the fridge.
- Drain the potatoes. Once cool enough to handle, dice them into cubes. You can leave the skin on if desired, I leave the skin of some and remove it from others.
- Drizzle with white vinegar while they're still warm and gently stir to combine. Let them cool.
- Toss with mayo mixture until combined. Add diced hard boiled eggs and mix gently. Season with salt/pepper if desired.
- Transfer to a clean serving bowl. Garnish with dill weed, paprika, and green onions.
- Refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hours, covered.
Notes
Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs:
Red potatoes or Yukon golds hold their shape best after boiling and have a creamier consistency.
Storage: Leftover potato salad that is refrigerated shortly after eating it can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days.
- Submerge the eggs in 2 inches of cool water in a pot on the stove-top.
- Gradually bring them to a boil.
- Once the boil is reached, cover the pot and remove them from the heat.
- Let them sit for 12 minutes.
- Place them in a colander and rinse them under cool running water to stop the cooking process. Then peel and dice.
Red potatoes or Yukon golds hold their shape best after boiling and have a creamier consistency.
Storage: Leftover potato salad that is refrigerated shortly after eating it can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days.
Nutrition
Calories: 285kcal, Carbohydrates: 32g, Protein: 8g, Fat: 14g, Saturated Fat: 3g, Trans Fat: 1g, Cholesterol: 122mg, Sodium: 351mg, Potassium: 790mg, Fiber: 4g, Sugar: 3g, Vitamin A: 296IU, Vitamin C: 35mg, Calcium: 46mg, Iron: 2mg
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Pretty good recipe, easy to follow, no crazy steps or ingredients, though I used hot dog relish instead of sweet because it was on hand🙃. Didn’t think I’d like the onion in it, but it wasn’t that noticeable and provided a nice extra texture.
So glad that you enjoyed it! I use dill relish often for this! 🙂 Thank you for the review!
Your method for boiling the eggs is completely wrong.
Your method would leave most of them incredibly difficult to peel and overcooked in the middle, leading to less tasty potato salad.
Hint: Boil the water, carefully put the eggs in with a spoon to avoid burning yourself or breaking them, wait for the water to boil again. TURN OFF HEAT. wait for 5 minutes, run hard boiled eggs under cold tap water. Perfect eggs every time!
The ability to peel eggs well depends on their age, not on the cooking method. As eggs age, their pH levels increase, making the egg white less acidic. This causes the proteins in the egg white to loosen from the inner shell membrane, making it easier to separate the membrane from the egg white when peeling. Additionally, older eggs gradually lose moisture and carbon dioxide through their shells, which increases the size of the air pocket between the egg white and the membrane, which creates a cushion that helps to separate the egg white from the shell more easily during peeling. Now, as far as dropping eggs whites into boiling hot water, that will cause them to cook unevenly. (Also not a fan of the possibility of cracking the egg shell if it falls off the spoon or splashing hot water on yourself.) To be fair, I tested your method just in case, and the end result was a completely raw egg, that had essentially been sitting in hot water for 5 minutes. At least others won’t try it now! 🙂
I have literally never had that happen, did you insert the eggs while the water was boiling, and then wait for the water to boil again?
And you do not cook egg WHITES that way, this is for hard-boiled eggs only.
I have tested this method for over 15 years with different brands of eggs (Kroger, apple valley, egg-land’s best, a neighbor’s chicken, brown, white) at different ages (From fresh from the market to sitting in the fridge for nearly 3 weeks before cooking) and the results, a perfectly-cooked egg, easy-to-peel, fully cooked with a slightly moist but not completely dried-out yolk, are utterly consistent.
I am not sure what you are doing differently, but if you like, I would be happy to send you a video of how it works.
The only thing that I can imagine might be different is altitude or if you boil your water at a super high temperature. (I am high altitude)
I did cook a whole egg, I was saying that not even the white part of it was cooked. I emailed you a picture of what it looked like after actually. I did wait for the water to return to a boil. – boil, add egg, boil, shut heat off, let it sit for five minutes on hot burner. Not even close to cooked through. I’m not at a high altitude. Glad it works for you though!
So yummy
Thanks Sarah!💖
thanks for your fast reply.
Are green onions also called SCALLIONS??
Recipe say refrigerate for 4 hours. Do the Green Onions go on top after one refrigerates for 4 hours & also can it be put into the POTATO SALAD.
Checked so many recipes for POTATO SALAD & this one I cannot wait to try. Wish it was not so hot outside Queens New York so I could go shopping.
Yes, green onions are also called scallions, you can garnish on top just before serving or you can put it into the salad itself and refrigerate. Either way works!
Forgot to ask — YELLOW MUSTARD AS OPPOSED TO DELI MUSTARD?????? We have no Deli’s and do not like POTATO SALAD from Supermarket.
Feel free to use whatever kind of mustard that you prefer! (Deli, Dijon, Yellow, etc.) Potato Salad is flexible.