Julia Child's Trick For Perfect Potato Salad Is A Game-Changer

If you're not too familiar with Julia Child's cooking, you may associate her with nothing but the fanciest French dishes. In truth, however, even some of her best-known recipes, like coq au vin and boeuf Bourguignon, are closer to hearty peasant fare than they are to haute cuisine. Child also gave us helpful hints for everyday items, including cooking hard-boiled eggs in residual heat to make them tender, blanching your bacon to make a less-salty quiche Lorraine, and mixing a mocktail from bitters and soda (the Angosoda, she called it). One of her tips is something that'll come in handy next time you're cooking for a picnic or barbecue: cutting up the potatoes before you boil them for potato salad.

Depending on the recipe, Child would peel and then either halve or quarter the potatoes or slice them into rounds. Since a cut-up potato has more surface area than one that's left intact, it cooks more quickly. This means you'll need to keep an eye on — and a fork ready to stick in — the cut-up potatoes to make sure they don't turn to mush from overcooking. They could be tender in as little as five minutes, and likely won't take much more than ten. You should also try to chop the potatoes into similarly-sized pieces so they all cook evenly.

Julia Child may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of potato salad, but she did have more than one recipe for this dish. It's unknown as to whether she ever brought any of them to a potluck in a Tupperware bowl, though. "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" contains instructions for making a classic French-style cold salad called pommes de terre à l'huile. Despite its lengthy name, this is a simple mixture of sliced boiled potatoes dressed in white wine and vinaigrette, garnished with fresh herbs. If it's embellished with additional ingredients such as sliced cold beef, boiled eggs, onions, and tomatoes, it transforms into a different dish called salade de boeuf à la Parisienne. The book also has a recipe for salade Niçoise with boiled potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, green beans, tuna, and anchovies, as well as a budget-friendly salade à la d'Argenson that can be made with boiled potatoes and canned beets, along with any leftover meats or vegetables on hand.

None of the aforementioned potato salads really resembles the mayonnaise-based one most of us are familiar with. In a later cookbook, "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home," Child, along with her friend and frequent collaborator Jacques Pépin, shared a recipe for a more American-style salad in which potatoes are mixed with mayonnaise and vinegar. The salad also includes just about every mix-in you can think of: bacon, boiled eggs, celery, green onions, and chopped pickles, with lettuce, parsley, pimentos, and tomatoes suggested as possible garnishes. Apparently, American cuisine as seen through the eyes of TV's favorite French chefs was a rather over-the-top affair.