Southern Style Potato Salad
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My top choice for a BBQ party is this Southern-style potato salad. I make it with russet potatoes folded with red onion, celery, bread-and-butter pickles, boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and yellow mustard, then finish it with paprika and fresh chives. This amazing salad is ready in about 30 minutes, and it’s the perfect cold, tangy, and absolutely delicious side dish to serve at any cookout.
Backyard barbecues at our house live and die by the side dishes, and a Southern potato salad is the one I will not show up without. I mean, is there anything better at a backyard get-together than an insanely creamy, tangy, mustard-forward potato salad that has been sitting in the fridge just long enough for the flavors to settle in? Park it next to my classic Southern cornbread or my baked macaroni and cheese and you have the spine of a real cookout plate.
Southern Style Potato Salad
Southern potato salad is the mayonnaise-and-mustard version most American cooks grew up on. The dish itself traces back to 19th-century German immigrants who brought their cold, mayonnaise-and-egg-bound potato salad to American kitchens, and the Southern take added yellow mustard, bread-and-butter pickles, and paprika on top.
As you might already know, Southern-style potato salad has plenty of variations. Some people add sugar, while others don’t. Some swear by sweet pickle relish, while others leave it out. Even the type of potato sparks debate. Ha! As a chef and foodie, I recommend making it the way you and your family enjoy it most. That said, if you’re looking for a classic Southern-style potato salad, my recipe below is the one you should definitely try.
The technique I use is the half-mash. I mash some of the cooked potatoes into a rough paste, then fold in the remaining potato pieces. This gives the salad a creamy base that holds everything together while still leaving plenty of tender chunks throughout. I use a tight ratio of mayonnaise to yellow mustard with a little sugar to balance, the celery and red onion are small enough to coat the spoon, and the bread-and-butter pickles bring the sweet brine that puts a Southern bowl over the top. Don’t just take my word for it, give it a try yourself!
Ingredients and Substitutions
The potato is basically the whole dish in a Southern potato salad, and every other ingredient is a complement around it. Here is what I use, plus the swaps I have made when the produce bin disagrees:
- Russet potatoes – Peeled and thinly sliced into rounds. Russets break down a little when I mash a third of them, which is exactly the body I want. Yukon Gold or Red Bliss are straight swaps; expect a denser final texture.
- Red onion – Peeled and small-diced. Yellow, white, or sweet onion all stand in.
- Celery is the only crunch in the bowl, so I keep the dice on the smaller side of medium. Skip the celery if you are a picky eater.
- Bread-and-butter pickles – Finely minced. The sweet brine is what makes a Southern potato salad Southern. My homemade bread-and-butter pickles are what I use here, and a good jarred kosher dill is the swap when I want a sharper bowl. Sweet pickle relish stands in for the minced pickle.
- I use my perfect hard-boiled eggs so the yolks are set without going gray. This is the ingredient I splurge on; extra eggs are extra fat, extra flavor, and worth it.
- My homemade mayonnaise takes this up a level, and a good jarred mayo like Hellmann’s or Duke’s is what I open on a weeknight. Skip light mayo; the dressing goes thin.
- Yellow mustard – The classic Southern note and what separates this from a Northern mayo-only salad. A little Dijon stirred in alongside is a nice second layer when I want a sharper edge, but the yellow has to stay.
- Sugar, paprika, sea salt, black pepper – Sugar to round the mustard, paprika folded in plus a little extra dusted on top for color. Smoked paprika is a nice swap too.
How to Make Southern Style Potato Salad
Slice the potatoes: Peel the russets, cut each one in half lengthwise, then again, and slice across into 1/4 inch rounds. Smaller pieces cook faster and mash easier.
Boil the potatoes: Drop the sliced potatoes into a large pot of boiling salted water as the ocean and cook for about 6 minutes.
Ice-bath the potatoes: Lift the strainer straight out of the boiling water, give it 2 or 3 hard shakes to drop the surface water, and dump the potatoes into a large bowl of ice and cold water. Move them around with a spoon until the ice is mostly melted, then strain again and let them sit in the colander to shed the last of the water.
Small-dice the aromatics: Small-dice the red onion, medium-dice the celery, and finely mince the bread-and-butter pickles, all about the size of a pencil eraser. Drop everything into a separate prep bowl.
Dice the hard-boiled eggs: Peel the cooked eggs and small-dice each one into rough pieces. An egg slicer makes quick work of it; a sharp knife works fine.
Mash a third of the potatoes: Drop about a third of the cooled potatoes into a large mixing bowl and use a hand masher to break them down into a rough paste, not a smooth puree. This rough mash is what gives the salad its creamy body without adding a second cup of mayo.
Fold everything together: Add the rest of the whole potatoes to the mashed base, then the diced onion, celery, pickles, eggs, mayonnaise, yellow mustard, sugar, paprika, sea salt, and black pepper. Fold with a rubber spatula until the dressing coats every piece.
Garnish and chill: Scrape the salad into a serving bowl, dust the top with a little extra paprika, and finish with thinly sliced fresh chives. Cover the bowl and refrigerate at least an hour before serving so the flavors fold all the way in.
chef tip + notes
In my experience the single place a Southern potato salad falls apart is in the boil, so the whole bowl comes down to one call: pull the potatoes the second a fork pressed against a slice breaks it in half without resistance. A minute past that and the slices go waterlogged; the dressing has nowhere to grip and the bowl mushes out under its own weight no matter how much pickle and mustard go in.
- Salt the bowl after the dressing folds in, never before. Why? Well, mainly because the mayo, the pickle brine, and the mustard each bring their own salt. Season at the start and the bowl tips over before the rest of the ingredients have a say. Taste a full spoonful cold, then adjust.
- Make it the morning of, not the day before: An hour of rest is the minimum; 6 to 8 hours is where the dressing settles into the potato and the onion mellows into the bowl. Push it past 24 hours and the pickles start dominating the flavor.
- A splash of pickle brine wakes it up on day 2, so I highly recommend it. Cold leftover potato salad tightens up overnight. Stir in a teaspoon of the bread-and-butter brine before serving the next day and it tastes like the first bowl again.
- Serve cold, not room temperature: A Southern potato salad is meant to be pulled straight from the fridge onto the plate next to hot barbecue. The cold-against-hot contrast is what makes this salad so good. Letting it sit out for an hour before serving? Absolutely not!
Serving Suggestions
I make this all summer long, and it is hands down the talk of every gathering I bring it to. I recently served it up alongside my smoked chicken wings and it disappeared before the second half. Yeah, it’s that good!
Any time the grill is going, this is the first side I go for. I scoop it next to a plate of smoked pork butt with a side of vinegar coleslaw. Spoon it alongside a stack of grilled bone-in pork chops with a few wedges of grilled corn. Set it out next to a sliced tri-tip steak or a platter of steak kebabs when beef is on the menu.
Make-Ahead and Storage
Make-Ahead: You can make this up to 1 day in advance. In addition, it would be best not to dress the potato salad until ready to serve.
How to Store: I cover it and refrigerate it for up to 4 days. This recipe will not freeze well.
More Potato Recipes
Video
Southern Style Potato Salad Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 pounds peeled and thinly sliced russet potatoes
- ½ peeled small diced red onion
- 2 medium diced celery stalks
- ½ cup finely minced bread and butter pickles
- 6 small diced hard-boiled eggs
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add the potatoes to a large pot of boiling salted water and cook for 6 minutes or just until tender.
- Immediately remove them from the boiling water and transfer to a large bowl of ice water to chill them quickly.
- Once cool, strain them and set aside.
- Take about 1/3 to ½ of the potatoes and add them to a large bowl and using a hand masher, roughly mash them.
- Add the remaining potatoes along with the rest of the ingredients and using a rubber spatula fold everything together until it is very well combined.
- Garnish with optional extra paprika and thinly sliced green onions and serve.
This is my favorite version of potato salad. The splash of pickle brine really makes a difference, too. The addition of eggs makes it more nutritious so I will sometimes have just this and a salad for lunch. Thank you for posting.
My pleasure!