For A Labor-Free Labor Day Potato Salad, Grab This Kitchen Appliance

Labor Day, a holiday meant to celebrate those who have to go out and earn a living, has morphed into a generic "end of summer" celebration marked by one last barbecue (before tailgating season starts, that is). The entrees may vary widely — hot dogs and hamburgers at a barbecue; steaks for those feeling fancy — but one classic side dish, potato salad, is an enduring holiday tradition because it's both cheap and easy to make. If you have a crockpot, you can make things even easier on yourself by setting the potatoes to parboil first thing in the morning, then forgetting about them until afternoon.

Since raw potatoes are difficult to digest, just about every potato salad you'll find calls for cooking the tubers. Usually, they're boiled in a pot on the stove, but if Labor Day temperatures are still at their summery high, this will make for a hot, steamy kitchen. Using the crockpot, however, will let them simmer at a low heat that won't add much to the heat or humidity. If you set the slow cooker on "low," in about six hours, the potatoes will be ready to use in your salad.

Once you've parboiled your potatoes in a slow cooker, you'll need to drain, cool, and chop them before mixing them with some type of dressing. A standard potato salad might be made with mayonnaise, and could include other ingredients such as celery, pickle relish, or hard-boiled eggs. The eggs can also be cooked in a separate crockpot, finishing in about three hours if set on high. To spice things up without too much effort, you could add smoked paprika, cayenne, or Old Bay seasoning.

Even though Labor Day is an all-American holiday, you might want to give your potato salad a European twist. If you swap out the mayonnaise for a vinaigrette, add onions and bacon, and serve the salad warm, you'll have a uniquely German variant. Another option for mayonnaise haters would be an Italian-style potato salad. Two of them, in fact: Insalata pantesca is made with potatoes, tomatoes, red onions, olives, and capers in oil and vinegar, while patate prezzemolate combines potatoes with olive oil and parsley. 

For an Asian-style potato salad, you could go with something Japanese by mixing the potatoes with Kewpie mayo, carrots, cucumbers, and red onions. There's also potato raita, a South Asian dish that consists of parboiled potatoes in plain yogurt seasoned with Indian-style spices such as cumin, mustard seeds, curry leaves, amchoor (dried mango powder), and asafoetida (a pungent powder made from a fennel-adjacent herb called ferula). With a little slow-cooking and some creative recipes, you're guaranteed to make your Labor Day celebration, or at least your potato salad, that much tastier.