Summer Fresh Potato Salad

Let’s face it; potato salad is NOT salad.  And if you’re making it with typical store-bought mayonnaise, it’s filled with some no-good types of fat and chemicals. Potatoes are delicious, and they are A-OK in my book, even though they are often vilified for being one of the “white foods” that are known to raise blood sugar too high, too fast.  However, there are many valuable nutrients in those little tots, and when a cooked potato is cooled, as in potato salad, the starches form a good source prebiotic food that feeds the healthy bacteria that live in your gut, helping them to proliferate.

But what if we actually turned a pile of delicious potatoes into an actual salad that was both delicious and and nutritious and filled with all things summer?  Well, I’ve done it, and it is as fantastic as you think it might be.  At least I hope you agree.

The great thing about this salad is how interchangeable the ingredients can be.  Whatever your summer garden has harvested can pretty much be included, as long as you have the key ingredient
– the potatoes!

I do urge you to choose organic potatoes, as they rank relatively high on the EWG’s guide to pesticides in produce. I would say to choose organic as often as possible in everything you buy, but if you do have to pick and choose, check out the EWG’s Clean 15 list, the fifteen foods found to have the least levels of pesticides in them.

The trickiest part of this salad is roasting the potatoes.  And if you can boil water and turn on your oven, you should do just fine.  When I roast potatoes (usually choosing Red Skin potatoes), I like to slice and boil them first for about 10 minutes.

If you add a teaspoon of baking soda to the water, you can get a nice crust on the potatoes during roasting.  Then I loosely chop them a little more, and spread them onto a parchment paper lined tray drizzled with a generous amount of olive oil.  I roast them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, flipping halfway through until golden and crispy.

Once you have your roasted potatoes, you can put your garden in a bowl!  My favorite salad base for this is arugula. My other key ingredients are perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes and a delicious vinaigrette. Beyond that, throw in a couple more garden fresh veggies, grilled zucchini, or even fruit.  Maybe a bit of cheese if you’re feeling it.  I sort of combined my peach salad combo with this potato version a few nights ago.  It was fantastic. As with the peach salad recipe I shared in my last post, choose a delicious vinegar to toss in this salad.  Find something unique from a local boutique oil and vinegar seller to really give this salad an extra something special.  I used Olive & Marlowe’s Honeydew Cucumber Balsamic in this salad.  It is THE BEST.

My final tip is to make sure you go heavy on the potatoes in this salad.  It is after all, POTATO SALAD, not a salad with potatoes in it.  Make sure you get a delicious fork-full of chunky potato, heirloom tomato, and juicy peach with every bite.   This is a salad where the greens play second fiddle to the other delicious components.

Now to recap, here’s what you need :

• 8-10 varying sizes of red skinned potatoes, sliced, chopped, par-boiled and roasted
• a bowl of arugula, chopped
• 1 heirloom tomato, chopped
• 1 ripe peach (optional), chopped
• 1/2 grilled zucchini (optional)
• 4 oz goat cheese (optional)
• a generous drizzle of olive oil and flavor-packed vinegar

Toss this baby together for these last several weeks of summer BBQs to impress guests with a healthy and delicious twist on traditional potato salad.

Bon appetit!