Make The Best Of What's Around

Mom's Potato Salad

My Mom's potato salad is my FAVORITE potato salad ever! It's something my siblings and I look forward to having at least one time per year. We had a BBQ this past Friday with our neighbors and I thought this would be the perfect time to make it. I could not wait to eat it. Here is my version of my Mom's Potato Salad. Thanks for letting me share it Mom...Love you!

We always make sure that we'll have leftovers for the next day, so I started out with a 5 lb. bag of red potatoes. Boil them whole in some salted water just until you can easily stick a fork through them. You don't want them too soft or you'll have mashed potato salad. I did this the night before. I let them cool on the counter then put them in the fridge to cool overnight. This makes for easy cutting the next day.

Friday morning, I made some bacon! YUMMM. We bake ours in the oven by laying the bacon on baking sheets and cooking them on 400 degrees for about 20 min or until crispy! I just happened to make some extra for breakfast. You can't make bacon for a dish and not want to eat some right then and there!

While the bacon was in the oven, I cubed up the potatoes that have cooled overnight in the fridge. I added about a tablespoon of pepper and kosher salt. When the bacon was done and cooled a bit, I crumbled about 8 slices right into the potatoes. And, if you wanna get a little indulgent, haha...poor some of the rendered bacon grease over the potatoes. Yep, this is why we don't make this all the time. I didn't say this was going to be healthy, but its oh so good!

Next up, you can't have a potato salad without some pickles.

Cut into small pieces and add them in. I also add in about an 1/8 cup of pickle juice. I love that hint of vinegar taste in a potato salad. I added about 3 large pickles.

Olives....you either love them or hate them. Our family loves them. I find it's cheaper to buy the whole ones then chop them up. I used about 15 large olives.

I'm not gonna lie, I just had to put a whole one on my finger and eat it. My boys did too.

What potato salad would be complete without Mayo?! I add about 3/4 of a cup and if that's not enough after stirring it in, I'll add small amounts till I get the right consistency! Just don't over do it. Nothing worse than tasting all Mayo.

Now, this is where I differ from my Mom. I really don't like raw onion taste. She usually adds in green onion. I'll either add in sauteed onions or onion powder like I did this time. Add in about 2 teaspoons of onion powder.

I thought I was done, but nope! After mixing it all together, I tasted it and it was a bit bland. So I added a dash more pepper, a little more salt and just a little bit of yellow mustard. This made it perfect!

Finally, put it in a clean bowl for serving and add a sprinkle of paprika to the top or you can garnish it with some parsley. There you have it. Sorry, I did not take a staged picture in a cute bowl. We were so ready to dig into this at dinner time I totally forgot to take a snapshot of my plate.

This is my all-time favorite BBQ side dish. I can't ever go a whole Summer without having it at least once. Thanks Mom for sharing this recipe with me so I can in turn share it with my kids.

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Centsational Girl