Dill Potato Salad

3 lb red potatoes, sliced into ¾” disks
½ cup chopped red onion
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp cumin
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 ½ tsp grated lemon peel
2 eggs
1 tsp sugar
3 tbsp chopped fresh dill
4 tbsp pickle juice
3 tbsp vinegar (white wine, rice, or red wine—white wine preferable)
Salt and pepper

This was an attempt to recreate what Momma So Horny does with their redskin potato salad. The goal wasn’t to get it spot on—it’s so delicious, by trying to recreate it I’d be flying too close to the sun on wings of mayonnaise—but rather to get a good potato salad with a little more tang and a little less mayo than what they do.

But before that, a quick PSA on a theme of this blog, which is STOP LIVING IN FEAR. Stop overcooking your pork, stop moving here, and stop fearing mayonnaise at a picnic. Mayonnaise has vinegar in it, which is an acid, which kills things. Therefore, mayo makes dishes safer from food poisoning. What’s actually going bad in your tuna salad, potato salad, and whatever else you make for picnics is the other ingredients—in potato salad, it’s the potatoes you have to watch out for. Really.

To start, cut the potatoes into little discs. You can cut them some other way, but, this is my fucking recipe and I like discs, so, that’s what I did. Some other things you can try to change this up:

• Cook like a Southerner and sweeten it up with a little more sugar
• Switch out some of the mayo (about a third) with some sour cream
• Add some celery—I don’t like it, but always a good addition to a salad

If you have big red potatoes, you might want to cut those discs in to semicircles just for manageability. Then cook potatoes in simmering water for about 10 minutes (change time depending on thickness.)

One the potatoes are done, pull them out and arrange them on a baking sheet. Pour 3-4 tbsp of pickle juice—enough to coat the potatoes—all over them. Mix them around so they all get covered. This will flavor the potatoes as they rest and prevent them from drying out—it’s a bit like brining the onions, which you’re also about to do. Put them in the fridge for 30-40 minutes until they are cool.

Chop the onion, and then put it in a saltwater bath for 30 minutes. The onions should be completely covered in water, and the water should be about as salty as the ocean (a couple tbsp of salt per cup of water or so). The salt breaks down the onions in a way that takes a TON of the bite out of red onions but still leaves them with that nice red onion flavor and color.

Hard boil the eggs. You know how when you hard boil an egg, it gets that nasty green-brown color around the yolk? Mine don’t. Trick is to put them in cold water, bring the water up to the boil, and then pull the pot off the burner. Let the eggs sit in the hot water for 15 minutes and then drain them and put them in cold (preferably icy) water to stop the cooking. Chop once cooled.

Once the potatoes are cool, make the dressing. I used about a cup of mayo. I started with ¾ cup and it just wasn’t enough, and you ALWAYS need more of this sort of stuff than you think, even though it looks disgusting when you mix it up. This amount ends up being a pretty light potato salad. Mix in the herbs, spices, lemon, sugar, remaining pickle juice, and vinegar. Pour it over the potatoes, add the onions and eggs, and mix everything up. Salt and pepper to taste--it needs quite a bit of salt in particular, even with the pickle juice. You’ll probably get enough salad for a side for 6-8 people out of this recipe. Enjoy.