One of our 5 (five!) fabulous potato salads is sure to make your Fourth phenomenal

Our ‘Best Potato Salad Ever’

My family has put me on a potato salad time-out.

That’s because I’ve made so much potato salad during The Great Confinement that we’ve each gained about 9,000 pounds. OK, I’m kidding — but it’s surprising we haven’t, considering the carbo count these past few months.

In more normal times, I try to avoid potatoes in favor of lower-carb vegetables — and when I eat them, they’re a rare treat (like sweets for some people). But in confinement, I’ve given myself license to eat them at will. After all, they’re so delicious. And comforting. And affordable. And available. You get my drift. If ever we deserved to indulge in a potato fancy, it’s now!

Plus, it’s great to have potato in the fridge. We have to cook every night, and it goes with most everything. It’s great with a work-at-home lunch. And it can even be a dazzling little stand-in for boiled potatoes in a main-course niçoise salad.

It’s been so omnipresent in our kitchen these months that one day we’ll probably describe something that’s everywhere as “ubiquitous as potato salad in a pandemic.”

Herb-Happy Potato Salad

Potato salad is an ideal vehicle for a garden’s-worth of herbs, as in the Herb-Happy Potato above. With its vinaigrette dressing, this is the sole vegan entry in our bunch; it’s also gluten-free.

An old-fashioned one, such as Toni Tipton-Martin’s from her Jubilee cookbook, can take you all the way back to childhood. (Both are super-quick and easy to make.)

I love the Jubilee one because it’s rich in hard-boiled eggs, whose yolks blend lusciously into the mayo-based dressing, there’s a hint of sweet pickle relish and a nice celery crunch. If you’re going all-American classic with your July 4 menu, this is the one for you.

On the other hand, if you want to play it a little more exotic, consider a Japanese potato salad — we have two to choose from. One is from Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking (which we recently reviewed); the other is the one chef Justin Holt serves at his Dallas ramen hot-spot, Salaryman. (And that one sports a prize on top: halved ajitama marinated eggs — like the ones you find garnishing bowls of ramen.)

Each serving of Salaryman Potato salad is topped with half an ajitmama marinated egg.

Oh, man — I’m getting a starch high just revisiting them in my brain!

Finally, there is the one that predates the other four on Cooks Without Borders — the one we named Best Potato Salad Ever before we knew there’d be such heavy competition.

That’s Wylie holding a batch of it, before he and Thierry put me on potato salad time-out.

What makes it so good? It gets a luxurious richness from soft-boiled eggs, delightful tang from cornichons and shallots and lift from an array of herbs, all in the form of a New-Wave Gribiche.

I think any one of the fiHve would be a welcome guest at your picnic or party tomorrow. You can make them ahead, or not. Oh, and by the way, they’re all easy-going — in case you want to swap potato types, or swap shallots for scallions, and so forth. Whichever you choose, enjoy. I’ll be jealous.

Happy Fourth!

[RECIPE: Herb-Happy Potato Salad]

[RECIPE: Jubilee Country-Style Potato Salad]

[RECIPE: Salaryman Potato Salad]

[RECIPE: Sonoko Sakai’s Potato Salada]

[RECIPE: Best Potato Salad Ever]

My favorite roasted potatoes

I have to ask you to forgive me. I've been so busy putting together Palate, The Dallas Morning News' annual food and wine magazine, that I have been a delinquent blogger.

I promise I will make it up to you: I have a couple of really cool stories in the works. One will feature a guest cook I'm really excited to introduce you to – Susie Bui – who stopped by the house a couple weeks ago to show me how to make one of her favorite Vietnamese dishes. The other is a Japanese story I've been working on for some weeks.

In the meantime, I have this for you: my family's favorite roasted potatoes. They're super easy to make and incredibly delicious. I would even say crazy good. I don't know who invented them, but I think it must have been my dad, who was a wonderful natural cook (he picked up the habit later in life). My brothers and I all make them. Or maybe it was my mom; I don't really know, but I'm calling them Brenner Family Roasted Potatoes. My parents divorced when I was a teenager, and these potatoes were staples in both of their houses ever after.

The secret is letting the oven do all the work for you: Roasting gives the potatoes a deep, rich flavor and a wonderful texture – creamy soft inside and sort of chewy and crisp on the edges. And the roasted onion, which falls into petals when you cut it up through the stem end, melts into fabulous sweetness. If I could eat these potatoes once a week, I would. 

Before roasting, I toss them with lots of fresh thyme, but you can just as easily use rosemary – or both together. And of course a little olive oil, salt and pepper. That's it. They make a great side dish for just about any fish, fowl or meat. I love them with roasted branzino (and that makes an easy dinner for which you don't even need to turn on the stove), or roasted chicken, or sautéed pork chops – your imagination is the limit. 

Do you like the platter up at the top of the post? It's one of my favorites – an early piece by my old friend Christopher Russell, who has since become a well-known ceramist and sculptor. (Check out his website – I think his work is gorgeous.)

But often I roast the potatoes in a pretty oven-to-table roaster, and serve them straight from the oven. 

So. Thank you for being so patient. Here is the recipe:

And I promise: More good stuff coming soon.