You can’t have a picnic without potato salad. My mom’s potato salad is merely a million in itself. The potatoes are seasoned with basil and parsley then toast with slice hotdogs. I loved it when I was a kid and I still do. Put a bowl of my mom’s potato salad on your picnic blanket and you will know why.
I’ve cooked my potatoes and they took about 10 minutes or so. They’ve cooled so they are ready for me to assemble my potato salad. But first, I’m going to grill my hotdogs and what I’m going to do is pierce them so when they cook it allows the steam to come out. So I’m going to give them just a quick little pierce. You could do this with a knife or a fork just on both sides. And you could sauté the hotdogs. You could boil them but I like to grill them to get that American flavor. Here we go, and it will take a couple of minutes to do.
In the meantime, I peeled the potatoes and put the herbs, salt and pepper. I boiled the potatoes with skin on because it helps them keep their shape and also that way they will become waterlog. It’s time to turn my hotdogs and look at that, nice grill marks. It smells like hotdog stand. Okay, so we’re ready to dice. We’re just going to cut the potato in four and cut it again in four. So, we’ll just leave it sort of bigger pieces, if you want the potatoes to be slightly larger than bite size because if you cut them too small they tend to fall apart when you toast them then you end up with mash potato salad.
My potatoes look good. I turn my hotdogs off and let them cool. Perfect! I’m going to start on the dressing of my potato salad. So, we are going to use some fresh parsley and some fresh basil. And my mom used whatever. I mean if she had basil, she used basil. If she had parsley she used parsley, it didn’t matter. She was just adding it for little green, so were just going to chop it. You know potatoes can sometime be bland so they need a little freshness, a little kick to them. So there is a little bit of green and freshness, now olive oil and the olive oil is the binder like mayonnaise would be classic binder for American Potato Salad. The olive oil is the classic binder for the Italian Potato Salad. And of course, some salt and some black pepper.
Alright, I think were ready for our hotdogs. The smell is like baseball game. I know what my friends are thinking. It’s not Italian but you know what, I loved it when my made it and it’s fun to make it now.
A couple more, okay we’ll toast it all together. A little bit more olive oil and it look a little dry. Soak up all of the olive oil and just put a little bit more. Oh! There we are, now it’s all coming together. Hotdogs are plump and juicy, a little bit of smoky flavor from the grill and the potatoes are meaty and they just they just remind me of my mom’s potato salad. That’s all I’ve done, I’m just bringing you back to my mom’s kitchen.