Japanese-Style Potato Salad Recipe

Summertime means potato salad time. But after so many cookouts and picnics, you've probably had your fair share of classic potato salad. It might just be time to try something different, something fun, something like Catherine Brookes' Japanese-style potato salad. This recipe adds some distinct flavor to your big cookout.

Among the assortment of lip-smacking ingredients in this potato salad is rice wine vinegar. "It gives the potato salad an extra bit of tang and sourness that cuts through the creaminess," explains Brookes. You also have ham, eggs, and veggies to make this a rather filling side that pops with flavor. 

While you can experiment with all sorts of ingredients in your potato salad, you owe it to yourself and your cookout crew to dial in this recipe and make it a standard for every group gathering. Or you can just make it for yourself and turn on all your tastebuds.

The Japanese-style potato salad brings a lot of contrasting flavors to the beloved dish. To start, you need 2 large potatoes (obviously). Also going into this salad are some cucumber, carrot, green onions, hard-boiled eggs, and some sliced ham. To tie everything together, you need some Kewpie mayonnaise, rice vinegar, and salt.

First, we'll need to cook those spuds. So peel your potatoes and dice them into roughly 1 ½-inch pieces, then throw them into a pan of boiling water. Boil them for about 16 minutes, give or take a few, testing the potatoes by seeing if they're fork-tender. This is pretty much all the cooking you need to do for this recipe; it's all assembly from here. Drop your potatoes in a colander and leave them in so they can steam dry for about 5 minutes. 

Slicing and dicing is the name of the game when it comes to salads, and potato salad is, well, a salad. Cut off ¼ of a cucumber that you can slice into thin rounds. Throw them in a bowl with the salt and mix that salt and cucumber together. Let your salty cucumber mix set for 10 minutes before squeezing the moisture out of the cucumber with a kitchen or paper towel.

Remember those potatoes? Transfer them to a bowl and mash them roughly using a fork. Keep the lumps; they add that chunky goodness to the final result. Now it's time to bring it home. 

Combine the cucumber with the potatoes and then throw in everything else — those sliced carrots, chopped green onions, and chopped egg — finishing with the rice vinegar and the Kewpie mayo. Now it's ready to serve! 

Sure, it's going to be the star of the cookout, but you could also cook it for so many other meals. "This would be great served as a side along with chicken katsu or teriyaki, pork chops, or even soups and ramen bowls," gushes Brookes.