• The salad is underseasoned Foods that are served cold need to be seasoned more aggressively than foods that are served hot—our taste buds are less receptive at colder temperatures Combine this with the heaviness of potatoes, and it makes sense that a potato salad needs to have more vinegar, sugar, spice, and salt than most other dishes But balance is key All the elements need to come together, instead of competing Hot and Cold The first step is getting the texture just right Potatoes are made up of a series of cells that contain starch granules These cells are glued together with pectin As the potatoes cook, the pectin slowly breaks down and the starch granules start absorbing water When you overcook them, the first thing that happens is the pectin breaks down too much The potato cells start falling away, and the whole thing turns mushy Welcome to cold-mashed-potato city, population: you Overcook them even more, and the starch granules will swell so much that they’ll begin to burst, turning a mildly offensive bowl of cold mashed potato salad into an outright disrespectful bowl of gluey, inedible goo Undercook potatoes, on the other hand, and they remain crunchy, and crunchy potatoes are grounds for immediate ejection from the backyard It gets even more complex: since potatoes heat up from the exterior toward the center, it’s possible to have a potato that’s simultaneously overcooked and undercooked The best way to accomplish this feat of culinary indecency is to drop your cut potatoes into a pot of already-boiling water When potatoes start in hot water, the outside will rapidly overcook before the center has even got the chill off it Make a salad with these, and you’ll have crunchy nuggets of uncooked potato swimming in a sea of gluey mash No thanks If you start the potatoes in cold water, the potatoes heat up evenly right along with the water, so that by the time they are perfectly cooked in the center, the edges have just barely startied to break apart—which is not a bad thing I like a little bit of broken-up potato to thicken and flavor the dressing This, by the way, is the best method any time you boil potatoes Of course, even with a cold start, one problem remains: potatoes require constant vigilance—they can go from undercooked to overcooked in an instant Get distracted for just a minute (say, to chase after your puppy who’s just peed on your backpack, then hidden your notebook under the couch), and you’ve got gluey potatoes on your hands There is a way to solve this problem, which we’ll get back to, but first ’Tis the Season Using russet potatoes is key for this style of potato salad Not only they absorb dressing more easily, but their starches actually help to bind the salad better To prove that they absorb seasoning better, I boiled russet and red potatoes, cut them into cubes, and tossed them with a dressing tinted with a bit of green food coloring You can see for yourself which absorbed it better: ... No thanks If you start the potatoes in cold water, the potatoes heat up evenly right along with the water, so that by the time they are perfectly cooked in the center, the edges have just barely... ’Tis the Season Using russet potatoes is key for this style of potato salad Not only they absorb dressing more easily, but their starches actually help to bind the salad better To prove that they... seasoning better, I boiled russet and red potatoes, cut them into cubes, and tossed them with a dressing tinted with a bit of green food coloring You can see for yourself which absorbed it better: