They call me.....Tater Salat.

Well, I made potato salad to go with our ribs on July 4th. Man, am I good at making potato salad or what?! Too bad I can't eat more than about 3 bites of it... it sits in the pit of my stomach and hurts if I eat any more than that. But I enjoyed the 3 bites I did have!

What made it over the top this time? I used my homemade pickles in the mix! And I splashed a little bit of the pickle juice over the diced potatoes before adding the dressing to it. M-M-Good!

I like the Yukon Gold or other thin-skinned, golden potatoes for salad. I boiled them, then peeled, then cut into chunks. I learned from Rachel Boies a few years back to mix the dressing for the salad separately, and to splash some of the sweet pickle juice over the hot potatoes. Prior to that, I just globbed the mayo, mustard, pickles, S&P all on top of the potatoes, then mixed. The potatoes ended up losing their shape and tasted like potato salad but felt more like mashed potatoes. So now I mix a goodly amount of real mayo (none of this Miracle Whip... it's a miracle anyone eats that), a big squirt of yellow mustard, a big tablespoon of coarse mustard, chopped sweet pickles, chopped green onions, S&P, and Tabasco all together in a small bowl. Then I pour that over the diced still-warm potatoes, chopped hard-cooked eggs, and a little bit of minced celery. Oh, and I had some fresh flat leaf parsley, so I added a handful of that, chopped. I also included some of the red bell peppers that I had pickled with the cucumbers. They added fantastic color and flavor to the concoction.

I think my favorite way to eat potato salad is when it is just made and still warm. I'll admit to nuking some once, trying to warm it up, and it just didn't taste right. There is a small window of warmness on potato salad, and a bite during that time is a little bite of heaven on earth.

Oh, and I only use kosher salt in cooking and baking. I keep table salt on the table n a shaker, but only because kosher won't fit through the holes. I find kosher salt milder than regular table salt. It does not contain iodine (is that in Leviticus somewhere, not to iodize salt?), so I make sure to serve seafood pretty often so we get our iodine needs met.