We have an annual Memorial Day cookout (or at least we always call it a cookout, even though we usually end up eating inside, which was indeed true last evening). It’s a lovely start to the summer, with me in the kitchen all day. Great way to spend a holiday, right? Actually, for me it is. I hadn’t really decided on the menu until late last week when I watched an episode of Cook’s Country, the sister program to America’s Test Kitchen. The episode is titled “Grilled and Smoked,” and involves the above potato salad and also a way to do brisket to get the maximum amount of crust on the meat. I would have to say that the brisket came out more like charcoal than meat, although everyone was very gracious and almost all of it disappeared. I plan a re-do for Father’s Day and will report on it then. But the potato salad! As I write this post I’m thinking about lunch and how I’m going to eat some of the leftovers (pictured above). As you can see, that’s a pretty small item. As with all of the best potato salad recipes, it includes bacon. (If you don’t want to go to the trouble of this recipe, I will share with you another great bacon-including potato salad recipe that has four ingredients: boiled red skin-on potatoes, finely-chopped red onion, crumbled crisp bacon, and ranch dressing, in whatever proportions you prefer. That’s it.)
Anyway, back to this recipe. Two aspects set it apart: the cooking method for the potatoes (grilling) and the dressing. The potato flavor is intensified by the grilling, and the dressing has chiles in it. Do give it a try!
Smoky Grilled Potato Salad
If you think all potato salads are bland and boring, I cannot urge you strongly enough to make this. It is seriously great and very unusual. And it's not any more work than a regular old version with boiled eggs and pickles.
Ingredients
- 8 slices bacon
- 4 tablespoons vinegar Red wine or, if you can find it, sherry, which has a sweeter, more complex taste, but which is hard to find at the grocery store.
- 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 2 small canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce with some of the sauce
- Salt and pepper
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 5 pounds small red potatoes scrubbed but unpeeled, halved if very small or quartered if larger
- 1-2 large onions sliced into 1/2-inch rounds and anchored with toothpicks pushed through the sides of the slices--use 3-4 toothpicks per slice. I used just one onion this time, but I think I'll use another one the next time, as the grilled onions are truly delicious.
- 4 scallions thinly sliced
- Finely chopped parsley or cilantro for garnish
Instructions
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The Cook's Country recipe gives directions for using both a gas and a charcoal grill, but since I simply used a gas grill that's all I'm going to discuss. So, first fry the bacon until good and crisp, then crumbled or chop. Reserve the fat.
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Turn the grill on to medium high and place a large sheet of foil over the grate or thoroughly scrape and oil the grate. I just use the foil. Close the lid and let the grill heat up while you're prepping the potatoes and onion.
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Toss the potatoes with 3-4 tablespoons of the reserved bacon fat and 1 tsp. of salt. Brush the onion slices with additional fat. Place the onions and potatoes on the foil and cook, covered, for 12-15 minutes. You want the food to be well browned with grill marks. Flip everything over, close the lid again, and cook for another 10 minutes or so. Test the potatoes by piercing with a knife; if they seem to need more time to cook, turn the grill off and close the lid, allowing them to continue to cook with residual heat. You don't want the potatoes to be completely carbonized, so letting the residual heat do the last bit of cooking with help avoid that.
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Meanwhile, make the dressing: Use a stick or small blender to mix the vinegar, mayonnaise, chiles, and olive oil, with 1/2 tsp. salt and pepper to taste. This amount of chiles will give you a fairly spicy but not overwhelmingly hot dressing.
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Let the potatoes and onions cool. Chop the onions fairly small. Mix in the dressing and the scallions, then taste to see if additional salt is needed and sprinkle with the herb garnish.
Recipe Notes
The original recipe says to serve this warm or at room temperature, and I wish I had paid attention to that direction and not refrigerated it. You wouldn't want it to sit out for hours, but it's not very perishable. I felt that the flavor of the freshly-made salad was better than it was after being refrigerated. If you need to make the salad in advance, I'd advise keeping the dressing separate until you're ready to serve. Potato salad recipes often say to mix the dressing with the potatoes while they're still warm so that the dressing will be absorbed, but I don't think that's a good idea. You want your potato salad to be creamy, and if the potatoes have drunk up the dressing then it's going to be dry. Just my opinion, as I'm sure my dear readers will be astonished to hear. You'll have to refrigerate the leftovers, of course, but that's life.
I wanted to make a substantial version of tabbouleh for vegetarians. You can do pretty much what you want with this. I give a list of possible ingredients and you can add or subtract at will and to taste. Most tabbouleh recipes are very heavy on the chopped parsley, almost as if that ingredients is standing in for lettuce, but you don’t have to add that much. You could even, if you wanted to, add some shredded cooked chicken, if you have any sitting around that you want to use up, but this is such a good dish for vegetarians (and even vegans) that it’s probably good to leave it meat-free.
Holding the whole pepper on a fork over a gas flame, turning it until all sides are blackened. Putting the peppers directly on an electric burner, again monitoring it and turning it until done. Putting the peppers under the broiler. Putting the roasted peppers into a paper bag to steam. Rinsing every bit of blackened skin off under running water. On and on. While these peppers are a great addition to salads, they sometimes can seem more trouble than they’re worth. But they’re very expensive if you buy them at the grocery store, and I don’t think they taste as good as the freshly-made ones. So here’s my take on them, which is still finicky but easier than the run-of-the-mill procedures.
This is another sort-of-fiddly item that I make because I can’t stand the thought of buying them pre-made. They’re really not all that hard. This is more of a procedure than a recipe. I’ve made them with Italian flavors since that fits with my usual homemade salad dressing, creamy Italian. Other spices could include cumin or smoked paprika. Fresh herbs wouldn’t work as they’d tend to burn.
I am mildly obsessed with salad dressing and for the most part refuse to buy the store-bought stuff. The following is a recipe that I have tweaked and tweaked until it’s pretty much perfect. There is almost always a container of it sitting in our fridge. A perfect salad to go with this perfect dressing consists of romaine, spinach, red onion, roasted red peppers, homemade croutons, and perhaps some toasted pine nuts, if you can stand to pay for them.
I first came up with this recipe for the Cherry Creek Chorale picnic that we had at our house back in August, before I started this blog. I wanted something crisp and refreshing and thought of this combination. Napa cabbage tends to come in huge heads, so two of them were enough for an expected number of 50. People don’t tend to eat a lot of salad at a buffet, I’ve found. I ended up getting someone to help me dice the apples and walnuts at the last minute, but it would work better to do them ahead of time and give the apples a quick dip into some type of acidulated water, with lemon juice or Fruit Fresh, then drain and store in the fridge. Maybe next time!