Instantly Upgrade Your Potato Salad With This Leftover Liquid

There are probably more potato salad recipes floating around than there are people who cook, and it seems that the only things they all have in common are potatoes. Perhaps the reason why there is such diversity in this dish lies within the tuber's personality. While it does have a distinctive flavor, it's pretty mild — almost neutral — and goes with practically anything. It can also be used to make nearly countless dishes from stews and pancakes to bread and to leftover mashed potato candy. It also picks up and absorbs the flavors of almost everything it touches, sometimes making it the most flavorful bit in a curry.

All of this means that a potato salad can take pretty much anything you throw at it, including stuff that you may otherwise toss out, like brine. There's one jar of brine that lives in my refrigerator waiting for the day when I need the last three solid pieces in it to top my nachos: pickled jalapeños. Adding these salty, tart, and spicy coins of green chile to a potato salad isn't anything new and makes an appearance in a Texas-inspired recipe, but the three slices I had were earmarked for something special, so I thought back to how I make Cuban picadillo — a nearly forgotten ground beef dish — by adding a glug of olive brine to the pot; a fiery variation of this tip might upgrade a mayonnaise-laden cold side dish (it did), and I was pleasantly surprised with how the result tasted.

I used small, unpeeled creamer potatoes to see if the skins' earthy flavor would be affected by the brine. Because almost anything tastes good with potatoes, I knew I couldn't just toss potatoes with brine and report back that it's fabulous, so I mixed in some extras that many people add to their salad recipes. I took inspiration from my go-to variety, a mild Argentine-style Russian salad containing cooked peas and diced carrots. I also added some chopped hardboiled eggs, celery, and green onions to the mix. But I didn't add any seasonings other than what's already present in Hellman's, one of Ina Garten's favorite mayonnaise brands.

The acidity in the jalapeño brine brightened up the preparation and lifted the flavors of the add-ins while providing saltiness and the unmistakably fresh, "green" flavor of the chile with just a hint of sparkly heat. It also toned down some of the dirt flavor of the potato peels. It was much less aggressive than adding the actual peppers and didn't dominate the whole dish. It doesn't take the side to Tex-Mex territory, either, and it would definitely play well with any other seasoning you want to include in your salad, even more subtle ones like tarragon or dill.

I didn't add jalapeño brine to the entire batch of potato salad, wondering how the other brines lurking in my fridge would taste in my otherwise bland recipe. Pickled onion brine added a big boost of flavor that really elevated the flavors of all the other ingredients (especially the scallions) without any of the vegetable's more acrid notes. That it worked well wasn't surprising since onions form the flavor base of many dishes. If you don't have pickled onions in your fridge, onion powder and a dash of vinegar will do the trick.

Apparently, someone at home was waiting for a Greek salad to use the two remaining Kalamata olives in the jar, so I tried adding some of that brine, too. It wasn't as tangy as the other two brines but added a lot of umami and depth of flavor. There was one liquid in my icebox, however, that I was curious about. If you've ever tried to serve yourself yogurt from a large container and noticed a pool of clear, yellowish liquid at the top, that's the whey,and it's perfectly safe to consume, although most people just drain it off. I added a few spoonfuls to my unseasoned salad and noticed that it gave everything a refreshing quality, lightening an otherwise rich and heavy dish without the texture and mouthfeel of actual yogurt. Like jalapeño brine, these additions don't steal the show but merely add a little something extra, similar to how a pinch of salt livens up baked goods and gives them a more balanced yet nuanced character.