Why this recipe works
Including boiled eggs adds enough protein to this salad that you could sandwich it between bread and turn it into a meal. Boiling the carrots with the spuds not only makes them tender but also brings out their sweetness. Salting the onions and cucumber tames the onions while removing excess water from both vegetables. This gives them an extra crunchy texture while preventing watery potato salad. Starchy potatoes like russet or yukon gold potatoes results in a creamier texture. Adding warm potatoes to the dressing ensures they get seasoned to the core.
Ingredients for Potato Salad
Potato - While you can use any potato for potato salad, I like starchy potatoes such as Yukon Gold potatoes or Russet potatoes. This gives the salad a smoother, creamier texture. Waxy potatoes such as Red Bliss, Fingerlings, or White Potatoes will work if you want the chunks of potatoes to retain their shape. Carrot - Many Japanese Potato Salad recipes call for adding raw slices of carrots to the mixture, but mine already has plenty of texture from the onions and cucumbers. I like to boil relatively big chunks of carrots with my spuds. This improves the nutritional content of the salad while giving it a great color and mild sweetness. Onion - Raw onions can be pretty pungent (even if you use sweet onions), so I tame them by salting them first. This takes the harsh edge off of them while giving them a great texture. For a little more color, you could also use green onions or red onions. If you don’t like the flavor of onions, you could use a crunchy celery stalk. Cucumber - Adding salted cucumber is the key to the great texture of Japanese Potato Salad. You want to use a cucumber with tender skin and not too many seeds, like Japanese, Persian, or English. Salting them draws out excess water from the slices, which not only keeps your salad from getting soggy but also turns their crisp texture crunchy (kind of like pickles). Dill pickles or sweet pickles are other good options here. Ham - Ham lends some salt and protein to this salad while giving it an extra splash of color. Boiled Egg - adding boiled eggs to the salad, makes it more colorful while adding a ton of protein. I prefer my eggs soft-boiled, but hard-boiled eggs will work too. Mayonnaise - I like using a Japanese-style mayonnaise like Kewpie brand. Tastewise it’s more like homemade mayonnaise with a more tangy and eggy flavor than regular mayo. Rice vinegar - Although Japanese mayonnaise tends to have a more tangy flavor than its Western counterparts, it’s still pretty rich, so I add rice vinegar to keep the salad from becoming too cloying. Apple cider vinegar or white vinegar will also work here, and yellow mustard is another good option to add more flavor. Other seasonings - The other seasonings are to taste, but I usually add some extra salt and sugar to the dressing. I like adding white or black pepper to my potato salad for a little spice, but paprika or celery seeds are other good options.
How to make Japanese Potato Salad
You first want to wash and peel your spuds (you can leave them unpeeled if you like potato skins). Be sure to keep them submerged in water, so they don’t discolor. Cut them into ¾-inch sized pieces. They don’t have to be perfect since they’re going to get mashed up, but you want to get them to roughly the same size, so they cook through at the same rate. Put the cut potatoes into a pot of cold water. Peel the carrots and cut them into ⅓-inch cubes. Add these in with the potatoes, then put the pot onto a stove over high heat. When the water comes to a boil, turn down the heat to maintain a simmer and cook the spuds until they are fall-apart tender. This will take about fifteen minutes. Slightly overcooking the potatoes is the key to a creamy potato salad, but be careful you don’t have the heat up too high, or they’ll disintegrate in the boiling water. While they cook, you want to slice up your cucumbers, chop the onions, and salt them. This will cause them to release excess moisture, keeping your salad from getting watery. It will also mellow out the onions’ pungency. To make the creamy dressing, whisk the mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, and salt together in a large mixing bowl. When the spuds are tender, drain them well and then add them to the dressing while still hot. Now, you can mix this together. If you’ve cooked the spuds long enough, they should partially dissolve, leaving small chunks behind. Be careful not to mash the carrots. By now, your cucumbers and onions should have released a bit of water, but you want to release even more liquid by massaging them with your hand. Then, you can gather them up and squeeze them to remove as much liquid from them as possible. Add these to the potato mixture along with the ham, and then stir it all together until everything is evenly distributed. The boiled eggs go on top of the potato salad to garnish it, and you can finish it off with a generous amount of freshly cracked black pepper or paprika.
📖 Recipe
