Julia Child's Simple Tip For Perfect Potato Salad

Julia Child was — and still is — a chef Americans looked to for culinary guidance. From how to make perfect asparagus and her key to great bread to her soaking technique for unforgettable beans, Julia had a tip for everything, it seemed. When it came to one picnic staple, she had an unusual approach for preparing the vegetable element, which, though perhaps foreign to American chefs, helped in achieving optimal results.

Potato salad was Julie Child's favorite Fourth of July recipe. When she whipped one up, she didn't take the customary route of cubing the spuds. Instead, she cut them into slices, potato chip style. American potato salads typically feature chunks of potato, while slices are what we're more accustomed to in dishes like scalloped potatoes and potatoes au gratin. The approach of using sliced spuds is a French preparation, and one benefit is that sliced potatoes cook more quickly. A quick boil in lightly salted water is all that is required, removing them when just tender. This helps control the level of doneness, avoiding mushy, overcooked potatoes or — Julia's personal pet peeve when it comes to potato salad — underdone spuds.

Another benefit of Child's sliced potato method is welcome news to anyone who has ever burnt their hands and fingers handling hot, boiled potatoes. Many recipes call for cooking the spuds first before cutting them. This leaves the chef either exposing their hands to the hot vegetables or waiting for them to cool, which, of course, takes much more time. But the ever pragmatic Julia makes things much easier, peeling and slicing the tubers before consigning them to the boiling pot.

After draining the water fully from the cooked potatoes for her salad, Julia Child's next trick was to leave them in the covered pot for 3 to 4 minutes. She emphasized the importance of this step, as it allows the spuds to become firm. She additionally added some liquid back into her cooked potatoes, like reserved potato water or chicken broth, before incorporating the other ingredients. The reason for this step was to allow the pores of the vegetables to soak up that liquid, so they wouldn't take in so much oil from the mayonnaise later.

The type of potatoes used is also important. Child emphasized the necessity of choosing boiling potatoes, not baking potatoes, as bakers won't hold together well in a potato salad. Red potatoes and Yukon Golds are two varieties she especially liked in her salad recipe. She also favored using new potatoes, which simply means spuds that are harvested early, giving them a waxy quality and making them lower in starch and higher in moisture than more mature potatoes.

When preparing potato salad, Julia further advised making it ahead of time. Letting the mixture rest for as much as a day before serving allows the potatoes to absorb all the flavors from the salad's other elements, enhancing the taste.