Craving yet another "lost" recipe.

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

When I was a kid, my Mom would spent entire summer afternoons whipping up big cake mix bowl batches, of what she called German potato salad. I've been all over Allrecipes and food.com and can't find anything even close to what I remember.

As I recall, the main ingredients were potato's, of course, celery, probably Miracle Whip, and probably white vinegar and maybe some boiled egg.

It wasn't at all tart but not really bland either. It had no bacon, tomato and had little or no mustard. Maybe a little mustard, since it was slightly yellow in color, but that may have been from egg yolks. I'm trying to remember something from 40-45 years ago.

Anyone know of a recipe close to that, that perhaps goes by another name than "german"?

[CosmicMemory]

1. Potato Salad

Sounds like this one: http://www.hellmanns.com/recipes/detail/31353/1/the-original-potato-salad

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

2. Wow!

That looks like it might be it. Or close. Of course I'll have to use miracle whip, since that's what we always had in the house.

Thanks much.

[CosmicMemory]

3. You may want to skip the sugar

Hi again. Just a caution: Miracle Whip contains sugar, so you may want to adjust or eliminate the sugar in the Hellmann's recipe. Good luck!

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

5. Nice catch, thanks

We don't even keep sugar in the house and usually try to hold eating products with sugar to a minimum. I actually never use an entire jar of Miracle Whip, before tossing it. I just use a slight smear on the occassional BLT and the evn more rare batches of tuna salad I whip up.

[SheilaT]

10. Miracle Whip contains sugar?

I'd have never guessed. One of the reasons I do not like that stuff is it has a sour taste, rather like mayonnaise that's already gone off.

Although, my limited experience with German Potato Salad is that it is slightly sour, which would make MW perfect.

[Warpy]

4. Not surprised this turns out to be a label recipe

Those were some of the best things my mother made, and she really loathed having to cook. Newspaper and magazine recipes let her down. Label recipes, never.

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

6. Yeah

I know my Moms spaghetti sauce recipe was from a 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook, that she jazzed up and made her own. I DO have that recipe, somewhere. I make it maybe once a year. My favorite.

[dem in texas]

7. Sounds a lt like mine.

Being a Southern girl, I have always used Hellman's mayo. I add a little more mustard, 4 boiled eggs instead of two, some chopped pimentos and sweet pickle relish are also must for potato salad. Sugar in the potato salad is added along with the vinegar to give the sweet/sour taste.

Here is a good secret for potato salad; when boiling the potatoes, add a few bay leaves. Discard them when draining the potatoes. Gives you another layer of flavor in the salad with the most bland ingredient - the potatoes.

[SheilaT]

11. I'll try the bay leaves next time I'm making a potato salad.

My secret to potato salad that even people who normally don't like potato salad just love is to season the potatoes before adding the mayonnaise. I use a bit of kosher salt, ground pepper, celery seed (you could use real celery here if you prefer), a tiny bit of minced onion, and perhaps bacon. Mix them all well, make sure you can smell a bit of pepper, celery, onion, and bacon (if it's there). Then and only then add the mayo.

I like a slightly drier potato salad, not a real creamy one.

[Worried senior]

9. This is the

only way I make my potato salad and everyone seems to like it.

[Major Nikon]

8. Sounds like just a classic potato salad

Someone else posted the Hellmann's recipe and that's probably a great place to start. Food companies like Hellmann's would often seek out very good and basic family recipes and then post them on their products. An example of this is Nestle's Toll House cookie recipe. Another place people commonly got recipes was from the old standards like the Betty Crocker cookbook which has a very similar recipe.

Another thing to consider is the type of potato used. Russet potatoes get very soft after cooking while red potatoes remain much firmer. Gold potatoes are somewhere in between and that's what I like to use for potato salad.

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

12. I'm trying to recall things from when I was 10 and younger (52 now), and

Really didn't pay much attention to, at the time being busy watching cartoon and such.

I remember always having big bags of potato's in the house, and they were always the big, baking size, light skinned ones. I remember for mayonnaise never having anything besides Miracle Whip. I remember always having a big jug of white vinegar in the cabinet.

Other than that, I'm totally clueless.

My Mom went back to work when I was 10 or 11, and that was pretty much the end of her dishes, that I'm craving these days.

[locks]

13. My German grandmother

always made "warm German potato salad." Online recipes like Epicurious are delicious.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. every German potato salad I have had

has been warm, and kicks the ass of all other types of potato salad.