potato salad ingredients: red potatoes, parsley, shallots and a lemon

Let’s be honest: we’re all about the mayo.  But there’s a time and a place for everything and sometimes, however rarely, it’s nice to have a mayo-free hot dog bun or a mayo-free potato salad.  Especially with one of our, er, erm… diets.  Anyways…

We have been a little quiet recently.  Mostly because we’ve been out of the state, or working late (just one of us!), or sweating in Bikram or on the basketball court, but not because we haven’t been cooking.  We’ve been working on a few things that we will post on soon, and now we’re back and hoping to kick off our return to the blog with an appropriately mid-summer-ish meal.

Mayo-Less Potato Salad

Based on a recipe for Fork Crushed Purple Potatoes by Smitten Kitchen.

(Serves 6)

2 lbs red potato

3/4 c yummy olive oil (we also did a version with 1/2 c butter and 1/4 cup vegetable oil when we found ourselves without the olive oil, and it was also good!)

2 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 cup shallots

2 tbsp parsely

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

(a few hard shakes of white pepper — optional)

This prep is pretty reasonable.  Start by boiling some (heavily) salted water.  Once it gets boiling, drop the potatoes in and let them cook for about 30 minutes (give or take depending on the size of the potatoes).

In the mean time, dice the shallots, chop the parsley, and juice the lemon.

When the potatoes are done, drain the water and break them up with a fork into 1″ by 1″ cubes.  Then add in everything else (the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, shallots and parsley).  Combine.  Smitten Kitchen calls these “fork-crushed” potatoes and uses a fork to crush them up.  We found that once we have them in their 1″ chunks, they crumble naturally as you mix in all the other ingredients.

red potatoes in a bowl with olive oil

potato salad with parsley and shallots

mayo-less potato salad with parsley, lemon juice, and shallots

The original recipe uses purple potatoes, white pepper, and fleur de sel, all of which we love and when combined really do make a kick-ass potato salad.  We have made and enjoyed her recipe straight up, but we have also found ourselves without any of those ingredients and that’s what this recipe was born of.  A little resourcefulness and tweaking led us to a delicious, and perhaps cheaper, alternative.

So, if you ever have a few potatoes hanging out, this is a light-on-the-wallet-and-waistline(maybe?) version of some classic summer fare.

Related posts: