Austrian Potato Salad (Kartoffelsalat)

By á-58

I think one of the most memorable foods I tried in Austria was the potato salad. It was everywhere, and often came as part of the “mixed salad”. Instead of being creamy like American potato salad, it tasted sweet and tangy, the perfect accompaniment to heavy meats or greasier foods.

However, I could not find the recipe for this anywhere. At least not in English. Finally, I decided to put Google Translate to work and attempted the search in German. I got a basic idea for what ingredients were required, but no ratios were provided. After much tinkering around, I finally got something similar and below is my closest interpretation. Keep in mind that you can change all these ratios according to your tastes, amount of potatoes, type of vinegar etc.

Ingredients

• 3-4 medium sized potatoes
• 1 tablespoon German mustard
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 tablespoons vinegar (I used plain rice vinegar)
• 10 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons finely diced onion
• cilantro to garnish

Details

Servings 6
Preparation time 30mins
Cooking time 50mins

Preparation

Step 1

1. In a saucepan, boil the potatoes in salted water until very soft.

2. Skin the potato in cut into 1/2 inch chunks. Place in a medium sized bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, mix the mustard, oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper together. Add the water.

4. Pour the dressing over the chopped potatoes and mix well. This mixture should look too wet at first (with quite a bit of water still at the bottom), and the potatoes will eventually soak up the extra liquid, which is what we want. The texture should be quite wet, and the potatoes should be partially broken down.

5. Add in the onion and cilantro, serve.