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Japanese Potato Salad

Japanese Potato Salad

Japanese potato salad is a mashed potato salad seasoned from the inside out. The potatoes boil for around 10 minutes, get mashed until mostly smooth, then take on dashi powder and rice vinegar while they're still hot. Once the base has chilled, chopped boiled egg, corn, sliced onion, carrot, optional ham and mayonnaise fold in. The result is creamy and savoury with sweet, crisp pockets running through it, and it's served straight away.
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Prep Time 20 minutes
Servings: 7
Course: Salad
Cuisine: American
Calories: 200
Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients
  

For the Potato Base
  • Baby Boomer Potatoes quartered, 1.5 lbs
  • Yukon Gold potatoes 4 large
  • Dashi or stock powder 1 teaspoon (measure it out before draining so it can go straight into the hot mash)
  • Rice vinegar 1 tablespoon
For the Mix-Ins
  • Boiled eggs chopped, 2
  • Corn 1/2 cup
  • Onion sliced, 1/2 small (slice thinly, since it goes in raw)
  • Carrot chopped, 1/2 large
  • Ham chopped, 2 ounces (optional)
To Bind
  • Mayonnaise 1/3 cup

Method
 

  1. Boil the potatoes. Cook the potatoes in a large pot of salted boiling water until tender, around 10 minutes. They’re ready when a knife slides into a piece with no resistance in the centre.
  2. Drain and mash. Drain the potatoes and transfer them into a large bowl. Using a potato masher, mash until mostly smooth, stopping while a few pieces are still visible so the texture doesn’t turn gluey.
  3. Season the hot mash. Stir through the dashi seasoning and rice vinegar while the potatoes are still hot, which is when they absorb it. Keep stirring until you can’t see any grains of powder left.
  4. Cover and chill. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the potatoes until cool. Don’t move on while they’re still warm, or the mayonnaise will split in the next step.
  5. Fold in everything else. Once cooled, add the eggs, corn, onion, carrots, ham and mayonnaise, and mix until combined. Fold rather than beat, so the mash keeps the texture you built.
  6. Serve. Serve immediately.

Notes

Recipe Notes

Three things worth knowing before you start.
The dashi and vinegar go in hot, the mayonnaise goes in cold. Get that order wrong and the salad turns oily instead of creamy.
Stop mashing before it’s perfectly smooth. The lumps are what stop it eating like mashed potato with extras stirred through.
Slice the onion thin. It goes in raw, and thick slices dominate everything soft around them.
A good japanese potato salad is defined by that contrast: a cool, savoury, faintly tangy mash carrying sweet corn, crisp carrot and soft egg, with just enough mayonnaise to hold the whole thing together.