We Asked 3 Chefs the Secret to the Best Potato Salad—They All Said the Same Thing

At homey restaurants, church picnics, potluck suppers and sporty tailgating sessions across America, potato salad is a well-loved classic. Although potatoes originated in what is now Peru and were a staple crop of the Incan civilization, the roots of American potato salad come from Europe, where the spud made landfall in the late 1500s after Spanish conquistadors returned home with them.

German immigrants brought their take on cubed, cooked potatoes—tossed with a zingy vinegar—to the United States in the 19th century. An early American version (referred to as German potato salad due to its origin) includes vinegar, onions and bacon fat. The creamy salad that is now common throughout the US arose in the early decades of the 20th century, after commercial mayonnaise hit the market.

There are now many ways to make potato salad, but the chefs we spoke with offered a tip that works whether you’re making a mayo-based salad or a German-style salad. Their secret to the best potato salad? Cook the potatoes whole and start them in cold, salted water.

The Chef and the Potato Factory

Park Rapids, Minnesota, is potato country. There, in the Northern Pineland Sands region of the state, the soil is coarse, warms quickly in the spring and drains rapidly after rainfall, making it perfect for the production of tubers and roots (and also particularly sensitive to drought).

In 1981, R.D. Offutt Farms built a processing plant in Park Rapids (then a town of 3,000) and began to churn out French fries, hash browns and other items made with chopped, shredded and sliced spuds. Now part of the conglomerate Lamb Weston/RDO, one of the biggest frozen potato producers in the world, that single factory produces 500 million pounds of product each year.

This is where James Beard Award–winning chef, TV host and writer Amy Thielen grew up—a land of community dinners where casseroles and mayonnaise-rich salads were plopped on plates with ice cream scoops and kids believed that the fries at their local fast food restaurants were crafted exclusively from local potatoes (they weren’t and aren’t). 

After moving to New York to attend culinary school and spending seven years working in some of New York City’s highest-end restaurants, Thielen returned to the vicinity of Park Rapids in 2009. 

A Chilly Start Is a Good Start

At home, Thielen grows her own potatoes: pink and yellow spotted Pintos, several varieties of golden potatoes and russets. She’s used them to test recipes for her cookbooks, Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others and The New Midwestern Table: 200 Heartland Recipes. One of Thielen’s strategies for making excellent potato salad? Starting the potatoes whole, in cold, salted water.

Molly Stevens learned to cook in France, spent decades teaching at prestigious culinary schools, has authored multiple award-winning cookbooks and is one of four co-hosts of the Everything Cookbooks podcast. One of her early cookbooks, which she co-authored with Roy Finamore and published in 2001, was called One Potato, Two Potato: 300 Recipes from Simple to Elegant—Appetizers, Main Dishes, Side Dishes, and More. “The process of writing the book made me love potatoes more than I did going into it,” she noted. 

How does Stevens, a bona fide expert, start her ‘taters for potato salad? Whole, in cold, salted water, “keeping the jackets on.” Because potatoes are rarely even in size, Stevens takes the time to pull smaller ones out of the cooking water first, leaving the bigger ones in the bubbles until they reach the perfect doneness. She determines this by sticking them with a skewer rather than cutting into them with a knife. “If the skins are bursting, you’ve probably overcooked them,” she warned. 

After earning a degree at the New England Culinary Institute, James LaVigne spent years working in Boston-area restaurants, including the elegant, now-closed Menton, owned by Barbara Lynch. More recently, he developed recipes for plant-based meal delivery biz Purple Carrot. Like Thielen and Stevens, he starts his potatoes whole and unpeeled in cold water. 

When Dressing Potatoes, Some Chefs Like ’em Hot

Although they agree on how to start potato salad, Thielen, Stevens and LaVigne take different roads between cooking and dressing their ‘taters. 

LaVigne shocks the cooked, whole potatoes in an ice water bath and, when they’re cool, cuts them up with the peel left on “for texture and flavor.” Stevens, on the other hand, lets the potatoes cool just until they can be handled and cradles them in a clean towel while she skins them with a paring knife. “I like to get some part of the dressing on them while they’re still warm,” she explained. 

Thielen takes a middle road: She peels the potatoes and cuts them while they’re warm, but then she waits until they cool to toss them with the dressing. “If you let the potato cool after it’s been shaped…it stays together better,” she said. 

A Few Favorite Takes

Thielen recalled that the potato salad of her childhood, sometimes made with Miracle Whip, was “as scoopable as ice cream, and nearly as sweet.” She tends to make piquant German potato salad—she included a recipe for it in her first cookbook—and also enjoys tossing potatoes with old-fashioned boiled dressing, although she does that less often. 

The Austrian salad that Thielen learned about while working for European chefs in New York—which includes vinegar and sometimes pork fat in the sauce, and also beef stock or consomme—is another favorite. 

For his part, LaVigne hews more closely to the modern American template. “For family functions, my mom would always make a big batch of Southern potato salad with hard-boiled eggs in it,” he said. “It’s so good. It stirred my love of all potato salad.” 

Most of the potato salads he made at his restaurant jobs were German, sans mayo and laced with vinegar and bacon fat, but at home he leans towards mom’s homestyle version. He starts with either homemade or store-bought mayo—if the latter, it’s always Duke’s. Either way, he mixes the mayo with Heinz yellow mustard, Vidalia onion and celery for crunch, salt, pepper and eggs that were boiled alongside the potatoes. 

Sometimes LaVigne incorporates a few chef-y touches: “If I’m feeling really fancy,” he explained, “I’ll put some peppercorns and bay leaves in [the cooking water]. It’s usually just liberally salted.” Another less common touch: “I’m a fan of sumac in everything.”

Stevens doesn’t share LaVigne’s fond early memories of well-crafted potato salad. “There wasn’t a lot of stunning food in my childhood,” she said. “Potato salad, as I knew it, was either a deli salad…[or] standard American.”

When Stevens went to France, though, it expanded her understanding of what a potato salad could be. “There were salads made without mayonnaise,” she remembered. “There were salads that were potatoes with mussels or shrimp.” She’s also a fan of a classic salade Niçoise, a “composed” Southern French salad consisting of piles of green beans, hard-boiled egg, tuna or anchovies, olives and potatoes. 

What does Stevens add to her own potato salads? It depends on the occasion. She likes crunch from vegetables, including fennel or celery heart, and if she’s using celery she’ll usually include some of its leaves for a bit of bite. Briny items, including capers and pickles, are also favorite choices. 

“I really enjoy a vinaigrette-style potato salad, but I’ll still make a creamy potato salad because my husband likes it,” she explained. To marry one to the other, she’ll lace a tangy dressing with a little bit of crème fraîche, heavy cream, sour cream, yogurt or mayonnaise. 

When it comes to creamy potato salad, Stevens said, there are plenty of ways to make it truly delightful by focusing on creating a balanced dressing with interesting texture. “I do enjoy a Heartland potato salad,” she noted. “That’s a good salad if it’s made well. I feel like its stodgy reputation is undeserved.”

The Bottom Line

When making potato salad, cook unpeeled, similar-size potatoes in a large pot, starting them beneath a couple inches of cold, well-salted water. From there, choose your own adventure. You can leave the skin on the potatoes for color and vitamins, or peel them for a silky smooth mouthfeel. Toss the cubes with the dressing when they’re warm or cold, depending on your preference and on the type of dressing that you’re using—mayo-based sauces might benefit from cooler potato chunks. To make the salad memorable, be sure to add some acidic, crunchy and punchy ingredients. Don’t be afraid to play around with spices and herbs, spice blends and vegetable combinations from around the globe.