21-05-2025
How To Make Casey Elsass's Pickled Potato Salad
As the resident pescatarian at any BBQ, you can usually find me hovering around the sides. Not that I don't love a good ol' veggie burger, but I'll never force my host to make me a ~special meal~ while they're trying to do a million other things. So a plateful of carbs it is! (I know, how tragic.)
Since I take my sides very seriously (and sadly don't have an outdoor space for hosting BBQs), I love bringing a huge bowl of some sort of carby salad to my friend's place. But as I was brainstorming my side for this weekend, I thought, why not venture away from the usual potato salad? The kind that turns into the star of the show amongst plates of burgers and dogs. That's when I found Casey Elsass's Pickled Potato Salad from his latest cookbook, What Can I Bring?
It starts like any other potato salad: by boiling some steamer potatoes in a large pot of salty water. Like, really salty water. We want to taste the ocean here.
You'll know they're done once you can stick a paring knife through them with little resistance.
Drain the potatoes and let them cool for just a few minutes — enough so you don't burn your hands when cutting them in half.
Now, pickle-haters look away (and maybe find a different recipe) because this next part is what makes this potato salad extra special. All those halved potatoes are getting tossed with pickle brine, pepperoncini brine, vinegar, celery seeds, and more salt.
Once you give everything a good mix, you'll have to exercise a bit of patience so that the potatoes have time to absorb all that briny goodness and cool down for about an hour. (I promise it's worth it.)
Tossing the potatoes in all that briny liquid while they're still warm helps them really soak everything up, so make sure you don't let them cool down too long beforehand!
In the meantime, grab those same jars of pickles and pepperoncini and chop them up along with one bunch of chives.
Now that your potatoes have cooled (seriously, if they're still warm, watch an episode of Friends and come back), drain off any excess liquid and add your chopped ingredients to the bowl.
Next, add the usual potato salad suspects: a biiiig heap of mayo, grainy mustard, and black pepper.
If you happen to be a mayo-hater but still want to try out this recipe, try subbing crème fraîche. It'll still give you that richness with a subtler tang.
Lastly, we're tossing in some dill and parsley for a bit of freshness (and aesthetics, of course).
And that's it! Pile it all up on a plate and you'll have an easy potato salad that runs circles around that grocery store plastic tub you panic buy last-minute.
The brine-marinated potatoes mixed with the crunch of chopped pickles, the slight spice of pepperoncini, the richness of the mayo, and the freshness of the herbs make this a perfectly balanced carb salad that you'll crave in between bites of your burger.
Plus, much to my delight, it's free of the somewhat unpleasant punch of raw onions so many premade potato salads have.
Pickled Potato Salad is one of the 75 guest-optimized recipes in Casey's new cookbook, What Can I Bring?, which focuses on killer dishes and desserts you can bring to any party. Order it here!
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