Mom’s potato salad

I love potato salad. There’s just something about it that says Summer! To me a BBQ or picnic is not complete without it. My mom has a great potato salad recipe that she has been making for as long as I can remember. One common ingredient that most potato salad recipes have is vinegar. My mom did not care for that flavor in her potato salad (and I don’t really either), so she came up with this recipe that has a couple secret ingredients that make it flavorful and delicious.

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The first thing you want to do is cook your potatoes and eggs so they have time to cool. You will need about 4 pounds of potatoes. My mom likes to cut the potatoes into chunks and then peel them after cooking, but the peeling process was too long and frustrating for me doing it that way. Sorry mom! Haha. I peel the potatoes, cut them into 1 inch chunks and then put them in a pot of water to boil. You want to be careful with how long you boil the potatoes. They need to be cooked enough so that they aren’t too hard, but you don’t want to over boil them or they will turn mushy. I have found that 7 to 9 minutes after they start boiling is the perfect amount of time.

You will need 7 hard boiled eggs. I learned a trick years ago on how to get the perfect hard boiled egg. Bring your eggs to a boil, then turn off the burner, cover the pot and set the timer for 11 minutes. You then have perfect hard boiled eggs.

Let the potatoes and eggs cool completely. I will sometimes spread the potatoes out on the counter on a paper towel to help the cooling process go faster.

In a small bowl mix together 1 1/4 cups of mayonnaise, 1 tbsp of mustard, and 1/2 cup of ranch dressing. Ranch dressing you say? Yes. This is one of the secret ingredients. Even if you don’t like ranch dressing (and I didn’t for years), you can’t specifically taste it. It just adds another element of great flavor to this potato salad.

Next add 1 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp of pepper, and 1 tbsp of Johnny’s Garlic Spread & Seasoning. The Johnny’s Garlic Seasoning is the other secret ingredient. This is not to be confused with garlic salt, it’s an actual seasoning blend. It’s also great for making homemade garlic bread.

If you don’t have the garlic seasoning, you can substitute it with 2 tsp of garlic powder. Don’t substitute with garlic salt or your potato salad will be way too salty.

Add the potatoes to a large bowl. Peel and chop the hard boiled eggs. This handy dandy egg slicer makes the chopping process so much faster and easier and is much less messy.

Add 1/2 cup of chopped green onion and 1/3 cup of chopped dill pickles. Then add the condiment sauce and mix everything well.

This tastes best if it’s refrigerated for at least a couple of hours before you serve it so all the flavors have time to blend together.