Simple Red Potato Salad

This simple, red potato salad recipe makes for a delicious side dish to any meal. Using farm to table ingredients, this recipe cannot be beat!

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I’m so grateful that this red potato salad recipe has been handed down to me. It’s been made by my family for many (many) years, it is very loved and highly requested at gatherings. This potato salad makes for the perfect side dish to any meal.

farm to table: why we love this recipe

Friends, you know I love a simple recipe! Better yet, I also love any recipe that allows me to walk out to the garden, grab a few ingredients and start cooking.

This recipe calls for traditional celery. For the last several years, we have grown a herb-type celery or “cutting celery” as pictured above. This smaller celery variety is more potent, so much less of it is needed. These plants are extremely easy to grow, and will cut and come again in your garden as long as the growing season allows.

Growing Potatoes

Another veggie we love to grow in our garden would be potatoes! Why? They’re virtually zero maintenance. We’ve grown white, gold, purple, red and fingerling potatoes with great luck.

Potatoes are root vegetables, meaning the part that you’re eating is actually the root of the plant. The plants need to be buried as they grow taller, to give potatoes a place to grow (at the root). It is important to note that that potatoes should not be exposed to the sun during growth or storage.

Near the end of the season, the potato plant will die back. Plants become dried out and brown. When this happens, it’s time to harvest! Harvesting is achieved by, pulling the plant out of the ground and digging through the surrounding dirt to remove all of the potatoes. That’s it!

Our boys absolutely love digging up potatoes. It’s like looking for buried treasure to them! They get out their little shovels and the next thing I know, they’re covered head to toe in dirt and loving it (hence why I’m now a laundry expert). We’ve found that potatoes are a safer option for little helpers to harvest. For example, tomatoes end up getting a little … smashed.

To learn more about our garden, check out this post.

What to do with potatoes after harvesting

So, now you’ve got a bucket full of dirty potatoes. Now what?

1. Set the dirty potatoes somewhere to dry. We put our dirt-covered potatoes on a wire rack in our basement, which is relatively cool.
2. Once the potatoes are completely dry (after a few days), use a brush to clean off any dirt.
3. Store the potatoes in a cardboard box full of shavings. We usually pick up a bail of shavings from our local farm supply store and that one bail is way more than enough.
4. When you’re ready to cook, just grab a potato out of the box. Wash it and use it like a regular potato!

Potatoes can store in a cool, dry place for months. If your potatoes start sprouting in their box, you can plant them again next year as “seed potatoes” and they will grow new plants!

Forgot a couple of potatoes in the ground? Depending on where you live and the severity of your winter, they may still grow plants. This year we have several “volunteer” potatoes that have popped up in the back of our garden.

tools and ingredients used

• Approximately 5 pounds of washed, red potatoes with the skin still on.
• 1/8 C Olive oil
• 1 tbsp. White vinegar
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1/2 tsp. Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. Celery salt
• 3 Hard-boiled eggs
• Celery – about 2 stalks of cutting celery (herb celery) or 4-5 large celery sticks
• 1/2 Sweet onion
• 1/2 – 3/4 C Mayonnaise
• Pinch of Paprika
• Large mixing bowl
• Mixing spoon
• Measuring tools

how to make hard-boiled eggs

My father’s farmhouse is about 15 minutes away from ours, and he keeps a serious number of chickens. So, we keep several dozen farm-fresh eggs in our refrigerator at all times. This also means that our family eats a ton of eggs!

One of the ways we love to eat eggs is hard-boiling them, and this is how we do it.

1. Fill a pot with cold water, just enough to cover about an inch over the top of the eggs.
2. With the eggs in the pot of cold water, bring to a boil.
3. Let the eggs boil for about 12 minutes.
4. Immediately remove from heat and drain the hot water off.
5. Continually rinse with cold water until the eggs are cool to the touch.
6. Once eggs are cool enough to safely handle, remove the egg shells.

If you have backyard chickens, the egg shells can be crumbled and fed to the chickens as a good source of calcium. If you don’t have chickens, the egg shells can of course be composted or discarded – depending on what you have access to in your home.

how to make traditional red potato salad

1. Quarter potatoes with the skin on, then place in a pan of water to boil.
2. Cook potatoes until fork tender, about 15 minutes.
3. While potatoes are boiling, make hard-boiled eggs.
4. When cool, chop potatoes into bite-size pieces or gently smash with a fork.
5. Add the olive oil and white vinegar, then mix together.
6. Add salt, pepper and celery salt. Mix thoroughly.
7. Chop 3 hard-boiled eggs and add to potato mixture.
8. Dice celery stalks and sweet onion, then add to potato salad and gently mix in.
9. Add mayonnaise and mix well.
10. Store in the refrigerator until meal time, then sprinkle paprika over top for a pop of color.

Note, to make this recipe vegan: omit eggs, mayonnaise and add more olive oil.

potato salad printable recipe card

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Summertime gatherings are never without potato salad. This simple recipe uses mostly fresh ingredients, and some of which can be grown right at your own home! I hope that this recipe brings you all as much joy as it has brought to my family over many years.

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