My 1-Ingredient Upgrade For the “Best Potato Salad of Your Life” (My Family Can’t Get Enough!)
Potato salad comes in many varieties, but my personal preference is creamy and savory. Hold the sugar and sweet relish, please. Many people like added sweetness to balance the tang and creaminess of vinegar and mayonnaise, but when I make potato salad I focus on bumping up the savory ingredients to offset that richness. One of potato salad’s most quintessential savory ingredients, celery, is a great place to start.
Why Celery Leaves Are the Perfect Potato Salad Upgrade
Celery often falls into two camps — crunchy health food, or a background ingredient in soups and stews. In the latter, you often don’t know the celery is there, but it provides foundational flavor.
Celery does double duty in potato salad. A standard potato salad mix-in, it provides flavor, but also texture. I like to dice it pretty small so the crunch is a nice contrast to the soft potatoes without being disruptive. But it doesn’t provide quite the amount of flavor I’d like. Adding more chopped celery doesn’t really work — it throws the balance of ingredients off. Celery isn’t a titular ingredient, it should just complement the potatoes.
Celery leaves are the perfect solution. They essentially function as an herb. Leafy and soft, they’re packed with more flavor than you might realize. They provide a mellow, savory note without any additional textural contrast. Just pull them off of the stalks and chop them like any other fresh herb. It’s a bonus ingredient without having to purchase anything else.
How much you add is up to you. I like a fair amount of herbs in my potato salad, typically a mixture of celery leaves, dill, parsley, and green onions. You can mix and match as much or as little as you like. You may also be limited by your particular bunch of celery. Grocery store bundles, especially if you’re buying just the hearts, can be fairly leafless. If this is the case for you, open up the bunch and pull out the tender leaves that are hiding in the center.
Other Uses for Celery Leaves
I use celery leaves in any deli-type salad:
Celery leaves are also great anywhere celery is used as a flavor backbone, and provide an herbal boost. They’re a great stand-in for fresh parsley.
You can also use them as a salad leaf. (Extra leafy farmers market celery is great for this!)
This article originally published on The Kitchn. See it there: My Brilliant 1-Ingredient Upgrade for the “Best Potato Salad of Your Life” (My Family Can’t Get Enough!)