Potato Salad With Beetroot & Peas

I’ve always been a fan of potato salad – in many flavours!  I’ll usually make a basic potato salad in the summer months, kept in the fridge in a microwave Noodle Bowl just because I’ve got several of these and they have a handy lid, but any lidded dish will keep potato salad fresh in the fridge for a good 3-4 days!

I don’t often “choose” what I eat, but am constrained by what I need to use up – cooking for one and running a single person household means you’re usually looking first at not wasting what’s already opened, then at what needs using up – and right now I’m in the seemingly never-ending position of having to use up what’s in the freezer as I want to defrost it.

I like to use fresh potatoes for a planned potato salad, but using tinned potatoes in a potato salad is a great stand by choice as they keep fresh forever, until you want to use them.  As it’s summer I’d bought a small jar of sweet pickled beetroot and I had some peas in the freezer, so that’s why I made a potato salad with beetroot and peas!  I also thought the cheery red colour would look a little different on the plate to usual.

Ingredients: 

• 1 tin of potatoes, I used Aldi Harvest potatoes (19p), ~380 grams drained weight.
• Some chopped onion – I only had a few pieces of frozen onion in the freezer, so I used this up – it’s however much onion you want/have got.
• 100 grams of frozen peas, cooked. They need to be cooked else they’ll be like bullets.
• 4-5 smallish beetroot, I got mine from a jar.
• A large squeeze of salad cream, or mayonnaise, 80-90 grams, but go by eye.
• 1-2 teaspoons dried herbes de provence (or you can use mixed herbs, or your favourite dried herbs).

Method: 

1. Open and drain the tinned potatoes, you might wish to rinse them a little, but there’s no need. Slice/chop the potatoes into the size/shape you wish.
2. Add the cooked peas, salad cream/mayonnaise, chopped onion, beetroot (chopped) and herbs to the potatoes.
3. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.
4. Put a lid on the bowl and place it in the refrigerator for 2-3+ hours.  This will enable the dried herbs to soak up the moisture from the mayonnaise, else they can be a bit “woody”.

You can make a potato salad ahead of when you want it – indeed it improves with age.  Kept in the fridge in an airtight container it’ll be good for 3-4 days or more.

Serve as a side dish to any salad, or with burgers and sausages as a BBQ sidedish, or just a huge bowl of potato salad on its own if you’re a fan!

This time I served one portion of potato salad with the last small piece of Slow Cooker Quiche I’d made, with a simple salad of a tomato that needed using up, a spoon of Aldi’s jalapeno coleslaw (not a lot as that’s super hot!) and some grated cheddar.

The rest, I’m afraid, was eaten straight from the bowl with a big spoon the next day … but I do love eating potato salad on its own.