Julia Child revealed the secret to the perfect potato salad
What is the perfect potato salad? Is it a German Kartoffelsalat, with pickles and onion? Or Julius Jaspers’ potato salad, which you make on the barbecue and eat lukewarm? Julia Child, the American cooking icon, revealed the secret to the ultimate potato salad. You’ll want to try this!
Julia Child was an American television chef, famous for her show The French Chef. In the Netherlands, she is best known from the funny film Julie & Julia, in which she was played by Meryl Streep. Her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking is one of those cookbooks that really should be in every kitchen, even if only to look up how to make the most delicious Boeuf Bourguignon, Julia’s signature dish.
Discussion between two chefs
And her potato salad? It appears in another book, namely the cookbook Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, which she published together with Jacques Pépin. She discusses almost every aspect of every recipe with the French chef Pépin, as is only natural with fussy French chefs, but the two do agree on one thing: the perfect potato salad should be deliciously creamy. How do you achieve that? By adding a little of the potatoes’ cooking water. It’s that simple. Simple comme bonjour, as they say in France.
How to make the ultimate potato salad
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into 2-by-2-centimeter cubes. Boil them in plenty of salted water until tender. Remove a cup of the cooking water from the pan, then drain the potatoes.
- Put the potatoes in a large bowl. Mix the cider vinegar with a splash of the potato cooking water, pour it over the potatoes and let it soak in for 10 minutes.
- Mix the onion, celery, bacon bits, pickles, eggs and chopped chives into the potatoes. Stir the mayonnaise (or mayo-sour cream) into the salad. Season with salt and pepper.
- Place the salad in the refrigerator for an hour. If you make it further in advance, take the salad out of the refrigerator in good time: an ice-cold potato salad isn’t very tasty.
