Delishytown

JC’ s German Potato Salad

My Dad is a great cook, he took me step by step through this recipe on the phone the other day. Here’s a paraphrased version of what he said. 

“Get a pound of potatoes, the red ones. The white ones are too starchy and they’ll fall apart. You need the waxy ones. Put ‘em in a pot and boil ‘em, then turn the heat down to simmer. The trick here is to cook ‘em for five, ten minutes at a simmer, then turn the pot off and walk away. Just leave it and let them sit there.

Now take a 1/4 lb of bacon, cut it into dice, chop it. Cook it till it’s crisp, then take it out with a slotted spoon. No paper towels, just put it aside for later on. 

OK, now, if you have a lot of bacon drippings, pour some off. Look at the bacon fat in the pan & guess about how much you have. You don’t need to measure, just tilt the pan and look at it. If there’s 3 tblsp of bacon drippin’s in there, then that’s how much flour you add. Equal bacon fat to flour. Add the flour and whisk it, let it cook. Once the flour is cooked, you add 2 cups of water and whisk it like crazy. You don’t want any lumps. Now you let it thicken and it’ll thicken right up. You use your big cast iron skillet for this. What size cast iron pan do you have out there?

Now cut round slices of onions, about 1/8th to 1/4 inch thick, you want to use sweet onions, like a Vidalia. Add those to the gravy. Now slice the celery the same thickness, from the ends, and keep the leaves, they add flavor. Add some salt, 1/3 of a tsp, not too much cause you’ve got the salt in the bacon. But you need some salt or you’ll never taste the sugar and it’ll drive you crazy trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong. Did I tell you to salt the water for the potatoes? ‘Cause that’s important. You gotta make sure to put salt in with the potatoes.

Cook the onion and celery in the gravy for five, ten minutes. Let it bubble. Get the sugar bowl and add 1/3 cup sugar and stir it till it’s bubbly. Taste it. At this point, it should be too sweet, so sweet that it makes you sick, you should say ‘Oh, yuck…’ That’s what you want! Now, add the vinegar. You want to add the same amount of vinegar as the sugar you used. 1/3 cup sugar, same vinegar. It doesn’t matter if you use white or cider vinegar. Just regular old vinegar is fine. Stir it and let it bubble again, and taste it. Now it should have the perfect balance of sweet /sour. Add back the potatoes, fold ‘em in with a spatula, add salt and pepper, chopped parsley, and the crumbled bacon on top. And then that’s it, you don’t need to mess with it anymore.”

So there you have it. Don’t you sorta feel like you just got off the phone with my Dad? If you did, you’d be very lucky because he’s the best.