Easy 3-Ingredient Minty Potato Salad

I’m going to a beach BBQ so wanted to make and take a simple side dish with me – without breaking into a sweat!  After all, all beach BBQs are weather-depending, so it might not even occur.

I love mint and had used mint to make a Pasta Salad with mint last week and had left the mint out on the worktop to remind myself to use it more often – so that made a great reason to make a mint potato salad today.  It also got round my pondering over whether to make a potato salad with or without onion, as I don’t know if my fellow beach diners even like onion.

Ingredients:

• Approximately 450 grams small, new potatoes (or you can use a large tin of potatoes)
• Approximately 30 grams of mayonnaise or salad cream (2 tablespoons or so)
• ½ teaspoon of dried mint – you can use fresh mint if you wish.

Method:

1. Peel and dice the small potatoes, then cook them until they are al-dente (not so soft you can’t bite into them, but not so hard they’re undercooked).  This took me 8 minutes in the microwave (3+3+2), but you can cook them in a saucepan of boiling/simmering water if you choose.
   Tip: I didn’t know how many potatoes I’d need, but I did know I’d be wanting the potato salad to fit into a takeaway box, so I put the potatoes into the box until I thought “that’s enough” .  I did this on the scales so I knew how much I’d used.
2. Immediately cool the potatoes, to prevent them going soggy, by dropping them into a bowl of cold water.
3.  Put the mayonnaise, or salad cream, into a bowl, with the mint.
4. Add the cold potato cubes to the bowl and gently spoon the potatoes round until they’re coated in the minty sauce.
5. Pack the potato salad into a container with a lid and put it in the fridge to chill.

Although this can be eaten straight away, it tastes better if the mint’s been allowed to spread its flavour.  Time chilling in the fridge lets the flavours improve.

Improvements:

While the above will knock up a quick and easy mint potato salad, there are ways you can make it even better if you’re able, here are some ideas:

• Use fresh mint, instead of dried
• Try adding a teaspoon of mint jelly if you have it
• Grate a fresh chilli into the potato salad, for colour and heat
• Add onion, red onion’s good as it has colour.

Q&A on Potato Salad:

Q: How Long Will Potato Salad Keep?

A: In a lidded container, in the fridge, 3-4 days – after that it’ll start to look a little tired.

Q: Can this be frozen?

A: No.  Once made it’s a fridge item for 3-4 days.

Menu Cost:

I’d bought 1Kg of potatoes from Lidl for £0.59 and used just under half of them, about £0.25 worth.  I used salad cream, not mayo – and the cost of that’s pennies.  Mint isn’t expensive either.  For the salad cream and mint I’d guesstimate it was £0.05.  This great BBQ side dish cost about £0.30 and made about 400 grams of finished product, enough for 2-4 people as a side dish at a BBQ, or as an item with a regular salad.