The Olives That Take Potato Salad From Bland To Bold

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If you have a homemade potato salad recipe, you know that it's like gold to home cooks. Some of these recipes have been passed down or closely guarded through generations. Each of them has a secret ingredient that elevates the flavor and breaks up the blandness of potatoes and mayonnaise. Some add a splash of pickle juice for tartness, diced celery for crunch, or minced capers and various types of vinegar for a little zest. You can also turn potato salad into a gourmet side dish with some pesto and add a bunch of other little ingredients to elevate the flavor. 

Or, if you want to create a potato salad recipe that friends, neighbors, and guests will covet, you could opt for a certain kind of olive that delivers tremendous flavor with just one ingredient. Add pimento-stuffed green olives to the bowl and transform the whole dish in one easy step.

Green olives offer a blast of briny flavor that breaks up the monotony of all those potatoes, and also adds buttery texture and slight hints of sweet fruit. Pimento is the go-to stuffing for olives because it provides the perfect flavor contrast for the fruit — the tiny chili peppers add very mild heat and tang. Start with a ¼ cup of chopped, stuffed green olives, but you can add more for intense flavor. However, green olives aren't the only ones that can give your potato salad some pizzazz.

When it comes to adding stuffed olives to your potato salad, you aren't just limited to the green variety. There is a difference between black and green olives, but both are great for stuffing and adding a whole lot of flavor. You can also tailor the taste of your potato salad with your choice of stuffing. For example, you can use jalapeno-stuffed olives for a hint of pickled heat and anchovy-stuffed olives to add a unique, salty element. 

If pickles are your go-to addition to potato salad, gherkin-stuffed olives could be the easiest upgrade. Olives stuffed with blue cheese and feta or black olives with cream cheese are also perfect additions, delivering contrasting layers of creamy texture. And don't forget garlic-stuffed olives — whether pickled or roasted, they bring both depth and a pop of flavor.

It isn't just what you put inside your olives that makes them flavorful. A batch of bacon-wrapped stuffed olives will provide a spectrum of flavors to your potato salad: sweetness, brine, the mild tang of the cheese, and the rich, salty taste of bacon. You can also fill olives with feta and marinate them in red wine vinegar, olive oil, grated garlic, lemon zest and chili flakes to get an antipasto-like pop. Once they've steeped in the marinade, chop up the olives and add them to the rest of the ingredients in your potato salad.