This is hands-down my favorite potato salad! It’s so easy to make, uses simple ingredients, and I love the classic three-ingredient dressing. Our family has been making this recipe for years! You will love it.
I love this potato salad recipe so much. We shared this many years ago, and I haven’t found anything that beats how creamy and flavorful it is yet.
This recipe is EASY. I’m sharing how to cook the potatoes, my favorite potato salad ingredients, and our family’s favorite creamy dressing, which is so good you’ll be licking the bowl clean (we love it so much that we also use it when making our red potato salad).
Key Ingredients
- Potatoes: Small, waxy, thin-skinned potatoes are best for potato salad. (I especially love small Yukon Gold potatoes, which are pictured.) They cook quickly, and since they are small, we cook them whole, which means less prep time! Russets or baking potatoes work, but the texture is a bit different. You will also need to cut them before cooking.
- Celery and pickles: Both add a fresh crunch. Our family LOVES dill pickles, so we always add them, but you can leave them out or use sweet pickles instead.
- Red onion: I love a little onion in my salad and like to “deflame” the onions before adding them to my salad. It’s easy. Soak chopped onions in cold water for 10 minutes, and then drain. The time in the water takes the raw edge off the onion.
- Hard-boiled eggs: Eggs are a must for me in potato salad, but you can leave them out if you aren’t a fan. Hard-boiled eggs add texture and extra creaminess.
- Fresh Herbs: I love dill and parsley in this salad!
How to Make the Best Potato Salad
When making potato salad, I cook whole, small potatoes. I find potatoes cooked whole retain flavor and have a better texture than when cooked chopped. I simmer the whole potatoes in salted water until I can push a fork through the center. Small to medium potatoes (like the ones pictured) take 15 to 20 minutes.
While I love using skin-on potatoes for mashed potatoes, I remove the skins for potato salad. Instead of peeling before cooking, I do it after (it’s actually easier this way!). I cook my potatoes with the peel on, let them cool, and then peel. Since the potatoes are cooked, the peel comes off easily (you can see how quickly the peel comes away from the potatoes in our video).
I chop the peeled potatoes into smaller chunks and sprinkle apple cider vinegar over them. This is one of my secrets for the best potato salad we learned from Alton Brown years ago! Vinegar makes the flavor of our potatoes pop and adds a little bite, which is amazing when mixed with the creamy dressing. Other vinegars or even pickle brine are good substitutes.
From here, we need to combine the potatoes with the other potato salad ingredients and our creamy dressing.
The Easiest Potato Salad Dressing
I love how simple our favorite potato salad dressing is to make. It only has 3 ingredients and tastes so good that I end up licking the bowl. We use the same dressing when making this creamy herb potato salad and turn it into a sauce for roasted fingerling potatoes.
- Mayonnaise and sour cream make our dressing extra creamy. I love the combination and find a dressing made with only mayo too heavy. Plain yogurt will work in a pinch if you don’t have sour cream. Homemade mayonnaise makes this extra special.
- Yellow mustard adds some kick and color. I usually use Dijon mustard in our recipes, but regular yellow mustard wins in this potato salad.
If you’d prefer to use a vinaigrette-style dressing, see our herb potato salad made without mayo.
What to Serve with Potato Salad
We often serve this salad during the summer. I love it with burgers and grilled steak. It’s perfect with pulled pork and these fall off the bone ribs. And it’s just amazing with veggie burgers or these simple black bean burgers.
Potato salad is also excellent when served next to other sides, such as our pasta salad, this amazing corn salad, easy bean salad, and my favorite cucumber salad.
Easy Creamy Potato Salad
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
My family’s favorite potato salad recipe! Use small yellow, white, or red potatoes and cook them whole for the best texture. If your potatoes are on the larger side, you can chop them. If you have the time, store the salad in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so before serving. This extra time helps the flavors mingle and makes for a better potato salad.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
2 pounds small yellow, red, or white potatoes
1 tablespoon apple cider, wine, or rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayonnaise, try homemade mayonnaise
1 tablespoon yellow mustard, substitute Dijon or whole grain mustard
1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped, about 1/2 cup
3 celery stalks, finely chopped, about 1/2 cup
1 medium dill pickle, finely chopped, about 1/3 cup, try homemade pickles
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped, optional
1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs like parsley, dill, chives, tarragon, or cilantro
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Directions
- Cook Potatoes
1Add the potatoes to a large pot and cover with 1 ½ inches of water. Season with salt — use one teaspoon for every quart of water.
2Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer (boiling the potatoes can cause them to hit one another and break apart)—Cook 15 to 20 minutes or until easily pierced with a fork.
3Meanwhile, set up an ice bath. Add cold water to a medium bowl filled with ice. Drain the potatoes and then place them into the ice bath. When cool, peel the potatoes by gently pinching the skin and pulling it away.
4Chop the peeled potatoes into bite-size chunks, then add to a large bowl. Scatter the vinegar over potatoes and lightly season with salt.
- "De-flame" Onions
1While the potatoes cook, add the onions to a small bowl and cover with cold water. Wait for 10 minutes, then rinse. This step helps to tone down the raw flavor of the onions.
- Make Potato Salad
1Stir the sour cream, mayonnaise, and mustard in a bowl.
2Add the sour cream mixture, de-flamed onions, celery, pickles, eggs, and herbs to the potatoes. Gently stir to combine, being careful not to mash the potatoes too much.
3Season with salt and pepper to taste. If you have the time, refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Sour cream substitute: Use 1/2 cup crème fraîche or plain yogurt for the sour cream.
- Cooking hard boiled eggs: For instructions on how to cook hard boiled eggs, visit our tutorial: How to Cook Hard Boiled Eggs.
- Storing: Store your potato salad in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days. Potato salad improves on the second day, so this is a perfect make-ahead recipe! I do not recommend freezing potato salad (the dressing does not freeze and thaw well).
- Dried herbs: You can use dried herbs for this salad, we recommend adding a heaping tablespoon of dried herbs (I especially love dill and chives).
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
In the top instructions you say “I use waxy potatoes…you will have to cut the before cooking.” But in the actual recipe you stress how important it is to cook them whole.
Hi Jo, I suggest cutting larger potatoes (like Russets) before cooking them. If you have small potatoes (my preference), there is no need to cut them. Here’s the section for you “Small, waxy, thin-skinned potatoes are best for potato salad. (I especially love small Yukon Gold potatoes, which are pictured.) They cook quickly, and since they are small, we cook them whole, which means less prep time! Russets or baking potatoes work, but the texture is a bit different. You will also need to cut them before cooking.”
Your recipes calls for 2 lbs. potatoes . When I look at the video you have 6 or 9 potatoes in the pot. So I would like to know how many potatoes you use because six or nine potatoes is more than 2 pounds so I’m at a loss here. I donot want to get the count wrong. I’m making the salad.how many Cups, did you chopped 4 cups or two cups. Help! Looks so good and I wanna try it but I need help. Thanks. Muriel
We use 2 pounds of potatoes for this recipe.
Beautiful potato salad. The only thing I added extra, was some oven crispy bacon.Delicious!!
Delicious! We added this to our Christmas buffet this year, and it was so good. This will be our go-to potato salad from now on. Thanks!
Love your recipe