Why Your Hands Are The Key To The Most Flavorful Potato Salad

The weather is warming up and it feels like spring is just around the corner. With that temperature increase comes more time spent outdoors and that includes eating. There's nothing quite like that first springtime cookout to ease the winter blues and after months of roasted root vegetables, we're ready for the brighter flavors of spring and summer. One of the summertime standbys we can all count on is potato salad.

Potato salad at its best outshines other sides. A cool plate of fork-tender potatoes combined with some other ingredients and enveloped in a tangy dressing is the perfect complement to burgers or steak and brings a bit of chilled deliciousness to the picnic table. It has more structure than macaroni salad and is more filling than a salad of mixed greens. It's indulgent without being heavy. There's almost no room for improvement with this one. But what if we told you there was a way to really knock that potato salad out of the park — and you already have what you need to do it.

When making potato salad, the secret is getting the perfect potato-to-dressing ratio. Each bite should be full of flavor and that requires a certain balance. Too much potato and the salad will be dry and bland. If there's way more sauce than potato, your salad is going to be a gloppy mess. The best way to get that ratio is to make sure you are maximizing the surface area of your potatoes. Just like a certain famous English muffin, it's really all about the nooks and crannies.

Traditionally, you probably cut your potatoes after boiling them, but there's a better way. Let those taters cool down until you can touch them and then get your hands in there! Tearing the potatoes with your (clean) hands means they won't have smooth sides, but they will have all sorts of bumps and ridges. And those are where all the flavor is going to go.

Tearing the potatoes for your potato salad is going to guarantee that you are making the most of whatever dressing you choose to use. In addition to all of those crannies getting coated, skipping the knives means that parts of the potato can break off and meld with the other ingredients and the dressing. This thickens the sauce and adds more texture.

RJ Harvey, chef and culinary director of Potatoes USA, talks about what makes the perfect potato salad, citing the sauce to Southern Kitchen, "It's about that dressing, that sauce," he said. "That should also have pieces of almost dissolved potato in along with it." He's right too, the potatoes as a natural thickening agent will make your salad decidedly more decadent without being too saucy.

This trick will upgrade your potato salad and your summer. The one exception might be if you're making German potato salad, which relies on the potatoes being warm when you dress them. However, as long as the potatoes are cool enough to touch, you can bring this tearing technique to your next potato dish and become a hit at every picnic.